Due to various reasons, students’ enthusiasm is not high and the experimental results are not ideal because of various reasons.
In view of this situation, combined with the teaching strategy and characteristics of the technology based universities, the paper puts forward the supporting experiment improvement measures which are suitable for programmable controller principles and application courses, and fully mobilizes the enthusiasm and initiative of students. Improve students’innovative consciousness and practical ability. Experimental teaching plays an extremely important role in higher education and is an important part of educational reform.
Traditional confirmatory experiments are monotonous and boring, which can not fully arouse students’interest and enthusiasm in learning, and can not meet the development requirements of undergraduate teaching of technology. Through the course construction of programmable controller experiment, we try to apply the new experimental rules and contents to experimental teaching, which can continuously improve the students’application ability and practical ability of applying the theoretical knowledge to specific practical links, and stimulate students’ self-conscious learning. Experimental teaching is an important part of technology application-oriented undergraduate teaching. With the development of education and the advancement of educational reform, laboratory construction has been strengthened, experimental teaching conditions have been continuously improved, experimental teaching activities have been carried out in depth, which has promoted the renewal of educational ideas, improved teachers’teaching methods and enhanced students’ innovative ability. However, there are many shortcomings in traditional experimental teaching, and there are still many places to be reformed and innovated in the construction and development of laboratories.
First of all, laboratory opening and sharing is not in place, resulting in waste of experimental resources. Because of the limited teaching staff and safety considerations, laboratories are not open except for classroom time. In many cases, the experimental equipment is not used, resulting in a huge waste of experimental resources. Secondly, there is a serious shortage of students’autonomous experiment and lack of enthusiasm to participate in practical teaching. Traditional practice teaching has less class hours and more fixed content, which provides students with limited space to play.
Because the class hours and credits are relatively small, mostly for the nature of the examination, as long as the memory of relevant content can cope with the examination, so most students lack of attention to the practical curriculum, and lack of interest in practical teaching. In line with the strategy of “technology-based school, application-oriented” for technical undergraduates, giving full play to students’enthusiasm and improving students’ hands-on ability, many laboratories of the college have carried out an open experiment teaching attempt, which has achieved good results. “Programmable Controller Technology and Application” is a compulsory course for electrical engineering specialty.
The supporting “Programmable Controller Technology and Application Experiment” is a 16-hour examination course with two hours/two weeks and one credit. Each experiment is arranged for two hours. Students can do eight experiments in pairs. The first two experiments are cognitive experiment and basic experiment. Considering that students learn less and have limited methods, the experiment is a traditional confirmatory experiment. With the advancement of teaching, follow-up experiments can be carried out in an open and multi-method way. Every open experiment should be prepared before the experiment.
In order to achieve good results, students are given two weeks of free practice time. Therefore, at the end of the last experiment, the next experiment task was arranged, the experimental requirements were put forward, the experimental panel was introduced, and the feasible methods were suggested. Students do exercises on their own, not by rote memorization, but by mastering the method.
In the next experiment, each group of students randomly extracts an experimental topic. The two students coordinate and help each other, write the program on the spot, debug and modify it, and finally complete it. For example, in the experiment of LED digital display, students may be required to program to control the display of student numbers starting from eight segments of digital tubes simulated by eight groups of LED light emitting diodes (e.g. student numbers 091001130501). Each number stays for 2 seconds, and the display stops after pressing the stop button. The content displayed can be today’s date “20120426” or “SDJU”. EDU can also be S7-200 PLC or HELLO-PLC and so on. In addition to displaying content, there are additional requirements such as suspension, thermostatic element which can be determined according to the progress of teaching and students’mastery. “Analog control experiment of five-phase stepping motor” and “fountain color lamp control experiment” can be realized by many methods. In multi-method realizable experiment, according to students’actual abilities, students should make demands on students, so that they can accomplish their tasks through certain efforts; avoid fixed forms and unify requirements, students can pass the test by confusion, copy or memorize by rote. Through self-programming and self-debugging, students not only improve their practical ability, cultivate their interest in learning, but also enhance their confidence in learning. The multi-method realizable experiment has added the link of students’open experiment in the process, so the most difficult part is the laboratory management link. In order to enable students to carry out experimental exercises in various periods of time, it is necessary to have careful management standards, rigorous management attitude and hard-working spirit of sacrifice. Laboratory teachers, through continuous research and summing up experience, combined with monitoring system and other equipment, overcome all kinds of difficulties, and provide students with a good experimental environment. After the students have made an appointment, they can do experiments in the morning, noon, afternoon and so on. Research and formulate the relevant management rules and procedures and teaching processes which can reflect the orientation of the school and guarantee the realization of the training objectives of experimental teaching, the implementation of teaching methods and the standardization of teaching assessment, and compile them into a book. Editing, sorting out and elaborating the experimental instruction books are all areas that need to be perfected.
Through one semester’s multi-method open experiment training, the students’practical ability, confidence and interest have been improved.
In the examination link, the students perform well, most of them can play well and complete the examination task well. At the end of the semester, the performance of the students is satisfactory. Many students are interested in the programmable controller.
They hope that the graduation design will also do the relevant content. Combining the teaching strategy of technology-based universities and the educational goal of training technology-based talents, we constantly design, research, develop and guide students to improve their experimental ability, consciousness, interest in learning and confidence. This is our goal of carrying out experiments in many ways.