IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - March 2020 - 90

control loop design, and finally the
complete schematic and parts list.
The next step was a week of
design reviews, in which the instructors met individually with each student for an hour. The goal was not to
find every design flaw but to identify
designs that were seriously off track
or any ma jor design f laws that
would have prevented the LED driver from working.
After the design reviews, the students updated their designs and had
about a week to design their PCBs,
then a week to procure their PCBs
and parts, and a week to assemble
their boards. This left them with just
three weeks to debug and collect
data for a formal test report.
Then came the in-person demonstration with me, which was a very
stressful final exam. I had a checklist
to assure that each student was evaluated in the same way. For the dem-

onstration, each student had to show
me the LED driver operating over the
full range of input and output while I
took some basic data. I also had a
couple of questions about the operation of LED driver circuits to get a
feel for the depth and correctness of
their understanding.
To give you a better idea of the
project, Figure 1 shows a student's
LED driver board. The board is 4 × 6
in (101.6 × 152.4 mm).
After the demonstrations, the students have a week to complete a final
report, which contains questions
posed as if the students were in an
interview. The questions asked about
their design in particular, some
power supply questions in general,
and then questions like "What did
you learn?" and "What was your biggest mistake?"
How well did this approach of
"more lecture, a little less lab time"

work? In short, Roger and I both
think this worked very well. The
demonstrations went very well. All
students had the LED lit up, all drivers worked over the full ac line
range, and all of the students had
working dimming (although some
were better than others). Of the 19
students in the 2019 class, only two
had their drivers fail during the demonstration. Overall, the level of performance to the specification was
higher than in previous years. The
final reports were due today but,
based on a quick look, overall the
student's understanding is better
than the previous two years.
From this I conclude that we have
found a good balance of "cookbook"
(the intensive lecture series) and
requiring original thinking, analysis
and synthesis, and design work.
While there can still be some tuning
of the lectures and the overall class
schedule, if I teach the lab again in
the fall of 2020, I will follow this same
general approach. It was a good
semester. The students learned a lot
and so did the instructors!

About the Author
Robert V. White (bob.white@ieee
.org) has more than 30 years of industry experience as a power electronics
engineer. He has worked in product
design, systems and applications engineering, and technology development.
He has been an active volunteer with
the IEEE Power Electronics Society,
serving several years on the Administrative Committee, two terms as technical vice president, and as a Chapter
chair. He earned a B.S.E.E. degree
from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and an M.S.E.E. degree
from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
He is currently pursuing a Ph.D.
degree in power electronics at the
University of Colorado, Boulder. Presently, he is the chief engineer of
Embedded Power Labs, a power electronics consulting company. He is a
Fellow of the IEEE.

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