Moodle Platform and Online Renewable Energy Laboratory at Faculty of Electrical Engineering

Abstract

Renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies are the key for creating a clean energy future for not only the nation, but the world. world Energy Consumption relies heavily on coal, oil, and natural gas. Fossil fuels are non-renewable, that is, they rely on finite resources that will eventually dwindle, becoming too expensive or too environmentally damaging to retrieve. In contrast, renewable energy resources, such as wind and solar energy, are constantly replenished and will never run out.

Due to the rising need for professionals and academics with a background and understanding in the Renewable Energy field, Holon Institute of Technology (“HIT”) developed a new program at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. The Renewable Energy program gives the students technical and practical aspects of energy use (technology and methodology of the study) and energy efficiency. The program also deals with minimizing the environmental impacts of energy use, as well as with energy economy and environmental policy. The Institute offers its students a well-equipped laboratory, containing state of the art equipment in various fields such as: photovoltaic energy systems, a smart grid telecommunications and information security platform, wind and water energy work stations, and power electronics equipment. The Renewable Energy Laboratory is operating under a new experimental teaching method, and presents itself as the “next generation” lab. The Lab is “paperless”, which means that all the experiments’ notes, as well as the theoretical background, are computerized. The notes and experiments are all integrated into a “Moodle” platform. Each student fills an anonymous computerized feedback questionnaire at the end of all experiments. In this questionnaire they are asked about this new method of computerized learning experience. In this paper a summary of the results of the pilot conducted last six years is presented.