Prof. Dr. Unold, what do you do in your innovation professorship?

I develop a catalog of tasks and incentives to motivate students to apply their specialist knowledge in practice and thus deepen and network it. The practical tasks are carried out with a device called "Analog Discovery 2" and commercially available electronic components on a breadboard.

How could other teachers, students and researchers (at OTH) benefit from your projects?

The catalog is of course available to all students and colleagues. It can be used directly in other electrical engineering courses and can serve as inspiration in related courses. The only requirement is that the students receive an analog discovery set for the experiments.

Your teaching innovation professorship is about a small USB device called "Analog Discovery 2". What kind of device is it and what functions does it have?

The device replaces a complete (simple) electrical engineering or electronics laboratory with oscilloscope, function generator, laboratory power supply and digital ports. This enables students to carry out many classic practical experiments themselves. The hope is that students will also use the device for their own projects once they have become familiar with and understood its possibilities.

What motivated you to want to realize a teaching innovation?

I think the concept of "applied", i.e. practice-oriented, teaching at UASs is an enormous advantage of our type of university in today's world. There is an incredible amount to know and learn, but in my view, real expertise in engineering is always demonstrated by the ability to apply this knowledge in practice. I find devices like the Analog Discovery fascinating, as they can remove the limitations of laboratory capacity and deadlines. When students can work independently with high-quality hardware, completely new opportunities arise!

To what extent does the AD2 set increase the practical component or practical skills of the students during their studies?

By enabling students to carry out tasks themselves. In the "Intelligent Systems Engineering" course, each student is loaned such a set at the beginning of the second semester for the entire duration of their studies. The teaching innovation professorship is intended to ensure that students use the equipment throughout as many modules as possible. In addition to increasing practical skills, the aim is to promote professional networking between different modules.

News: Under this link you will find a video about the teaching innovation professorship of Prof. Dr. Heiko Unold. You can experience the various functions of the Analog Discovery Set in action here and see for yourself:

Practical applications of the Analog Discovery Set