Preliminary Evaluation of Experiential Learning in Engineering Pedagogy for Undergraduate Students Learning Logic Design Concepts

Low-cost computing devices in engineering educations face the problem that they are available with either too trivial demonstrative educational examples, or too complex industry grade demonstrations. This research targets to employ lost cost computing devices with newly generated step-by-step, educational components for university level. It will rely on the experiential learning methodology via developing well prepared educational components for Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices. FPGA devices are useful in logic design courses to experiment on doing. Existing FPGA boards are either too expensive, too naive, or lack effective educational components. A preliminary evaluation of the experiential learning was performed to undergraduate students. Results show a significant difference of understanding logic design concepts to same students prior to and after exposure to FPGA related experiences.