Educational Output: Notes

All DCT-REES partner institutions have different educational profiles and specializations, as well as different needs from regional industry and commerce. These profiles are reflected in the skills and knowledge of staff members. The DCT-REES partners agreed in 2018 on a development strategy whereby all partners (in some cases in conjunction with other partners) develop particular sets of NOTES which in turn will serve as building blocks for labs, courses, classes and even partial programs of all DCT-REES partners and for other HEI’s as well. NOTES have been constructed around 4 use cases, each representing a DC system or a sub-system. Some of the NOTES have been found to be relevant for more than 1 use case. They are labelled ‘General’.

dct-rees diagram

A NOTE in the DCT-REES context is a sub-set of educational material, that can be used as a flexible building block to develop courses and programs. A NOTE has several characteristics:

  • A NOTE answers a specific question
  • A NOTE has an owner (institution and staff member)
  • A NOTE has focussed content on a topic, containing a maximum of 20 pages
  • A NOTE contains raw yet validated material
  • A NOTE refers to its sources
  • A NOTE refers to prerequisite and follow-up NOTEs, in order to read items in a specific order

 

Each NOTE comes with a Front page, containing study load, author details, topic, summary, prerequisite knowledge and version / quality management indicators. There are several different types of Notes: knowledge, application and implementation. Some of these NOTES or parts threreof, have been implemented in the curriculum by some of the partners, for example, B.Eng. Tech programme and B.Eng Tech Honours programme of Durban University of Technology and B.Eng. Tech programme of Nelson Mandela University.

 

There are several advantages to the DCT-REES educational materials development strategy with flexible building blocks:

  1. Every institution developed NOTES suited to its own profile (in the disciplines of electrical power engineering, industrial automation, electronic and computer engineering, etc.).
  2. Any user can use these Notes as building blocks to suit their needs in terms of content, skills and knowledge. The owner and author can assist to tailer make courses, fitting required study load.
  3. Every partner has create and/or contributed to new educational content. Updating materials is more sustainable with NOTES, as ownership of each NOTE is clear.
  4. Students from other Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) can browse materials (via the educational community) and search for content and courses tailored to their personal needs. The information required to asses load and complexity of the materials is provided in ‘Front Pages’, which contain learning objectives and required knowledge. As such, the Project can support every individual institute with implementing curricula for new qualifications.

Several South African partners have refined development of the new Bachelor of Engineering Technology qualification. The needs, identified in 2016, place the emphasis on fundamentals of DC technology and its applications which differ substantially from the AC mains systems currently included in most curricula. DC technology content continues to develop at a rapid pace, notwithstanding the lack of coherent standards, the very limited availability of products, and the very limited experience of professionals and industry with this new technology. Offering flexible building blocks help accommodate different paces of implementation in different institutions.