Blended induction program for electronic engineering freshmen

This paper presents learning and teaching experiences gathered from an induction program conducted at the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka for newly enrolled undergraduate students. The induction program, named as the pre-academic term, was an experimental effort to explore the applicability of blended leaning concepts to enhance the learning experience of Engineering freshmen, while enabling smooth transition from high school to university education. In addition to standard lectures, an integral part of the program was in-class demonstrations, where electronic circuits were assembled from scratch on a printed circuit board and demonstrated using a projected camera during the lectures. Organization, learning objectives, brief description of the example projects are presented along with a summary of formal student feedback. More than 85% of the freshmen indicated that the induction program helped them to smoothly begin the university education. A qualitative assessment in the laboratory work indicated that about 98% of the students successfully completed the assigned hands-on activities.