Self training and meta-cognition goals. New approaches, trends and tools in modern teaching of power electronics

Teaching a complex discipline like power electronics is an open question and the best educational approach or the objectives to be achieved at the end of a power electronic course are still in debate. This paper presents a visual didactic approach chosen by the Authors in the last years in their respective courses in power electronics. It also discuss the objectives and the skills required to the students at the end of the course: in particular, some meta-cognition objectives recently fully entered into the education world in general. Such meta-cognition goals are now discussed for the particular case of power electronics courses. The Switching Functions (SFs) generalized approach is then discussed as an extensive and useful tool that can be integrated in many different simulation programming environment, encouraging students to use it in many different analysis situations both for examining the behavior of a power converter and to introduce them in the design of firing circuit and power system control strategies.