Jo Mar 14, 2022
Ko Thae Hwan, a researcher at the Faculty of Communication, has combined special purpose development devices and application programs in his lectures so that the students could understand easily what they learnt and apply it to practice actively.
In order to make students study with active attitudes as a seeker after new knowledge instead of receiving it with passive attitudes, it is necessary to make a proper combination of traditional and progressive teaching methods drawing on traditional ones.
This subject deals with several signal processing principles for amplification, filtering, generation, detection, operation of electric and physical signals, and the determination of parameters, system design and application methods. As the subject has a large proportion of theoretical lectures and touches a lot of things based on mathematical principles, it is important to provide students with as many chances of practice as possible to confirm the relationship between basic principles and practical application.
In the past, students used to learn the basic principles of a filter only in a theoretical way and to design it to simulate in experiments. Therefore, they had to analyze the operating characteristics of a filter only in a simulation environment, but could not see how it worked in reality, which resulted in low cognition effect.
For instance, since teaching on basic mathematical principles accounted for nearly 70% of the whole lecture, students faced an absolute limit of time to associate what they were learning with issues arising in engineering practice. In addition, no combination of simulation tools and devices for the analysis of the operation of a filter left them with a poor grip of the real characteristics even after lectures.
To solve such problems, he, first of all, combined a DSP development device and MATLAB in the lecture.
A notable difference from previous lectures is the frequent utilization of MATLAB.
When teaching on the approximation of an ideal low pass filter, he combined the theoretical calculation of the transfer function and the order and pole of a filter with MATLAB simulation so that they could compare the amplitude-frequency and phase-frequency characteristics under various design conditions, therefore ensuring maximum teaching density and helping them master the theories and methods of designing a digital filter at the same time. In this way, he did not focus on mathematical analysis or results, but on directing them to get the physical meaning of the design and the calculation process through simulation, which made them think about the corresponding simulation tools whenever they came across certain expressions.
Second, making an organic link of a DSP development device and MATLAB in the subject design, he put a simulation environment and the manufacture of a real filter into one.
Although the utilization of MATLAB certainly does help students have a good understanding of the design of a digital filter, it is not able to stimulate their creative power to the full. For this reason, he provided with a DSP development device for them to do experiments on and analyze the operation of a filter in the communication system.
For example, he gave every student different assignments so that they could compare the results from MATLAB and the DSP development device and draw conclusions on their own. Thus, they were able to find and correct their design mistakes so as to be well aware of the methods of design and implementation.
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Jo Mar 11, 2022
Yu Chol Min, a researcher at the Faculty of Metal Engineering, has been using anecdotes and practical data in physical chemistry to help his students have a better understanding of concepts and formulae given in the lectures. As a result, they have been able to grasp the main points of his lectures and to improve their practical abilities.
Physical chemistry is a subject which deals with the relation between physical and chemical phenomena occurring in metallurgical processes, and its contents are mostly related to abstraction and theory. For this reason, if the lecture is focused on explanation of theories, derivation of formulas or calculation, students will find it difficult to have a notion of what they are learning and it may lead to the decrease in their enthusiasm for study.
Therefore, he decided to invent some methods to stimulate students’ interest and enthusiasm and to provide them with a vivid notion.
To start with, he used the method of telling anecdotes about famous scientists to improve the understanding of concepts and formulas given in the lectures.
Even a single concept, a law or a formula came into being through the efforts of many scientists and it involved corresponding anecdotes.
If students are told certain anecdotes related to a notion or a formula, they can get to know about the history and mysterious background of them and understand them more easily.
For instance, he used the following anecdote in the lecture on the second law of thermodynamics.
The efficiency of the steam engine made by Watt in 1770s was less than 10% and it wasted a large amount of heat energy. So scientists tried to make a perpetual machine which would convert the whole amount of heat energy provided by a single heat source to completely different kind of energy.
“Zero motor” which a scientist attempted to design is a typical example. According to research, if the heat diffused in the process of lowering the temperature of about 109km3 of the sea water on the earth by 0.25℃ was converted into energy, 1015kW of electrical energy would be produced, which is said to be quite enough for the whole world to use for as long as a thousand years.
He wondered if he could get mechanical energy from the steam released when liquid ammonia in a cylinder was gasified by such a huge amount of heat energy, and liquefy it back. Then, he was planning to make a motor which produces energy constantly through this cyclic process. However, his idea turned out to impossible and his effort was in vain since gasified ammonia can never be liquefied on its own.
In addition to him, many scientists attempted to make a perpetual machine for many years, but they all failed. In the meantime, an idea came into their minds. They wondered if the impossibility of making a perpetual machine might serve as a kind of law that explains the natural world. That was formulated as the second law of thermodynamics in the middle of the 19th century.
Such a historical fact related to a perpetual machine stimulated students’ interest in the second law of thermodynamics so they could have a scientific understanding of what a perpetual machine was and why it was impossible to make it.
Next, he led students to grasp the gist of the lecture by themselves and to improve their practical abilities by giving a scientific solution to the problems they usually come across in their daily life.
The examples closely connected to new knowledge and often seen in daily lives could improve their faculties of inquiry and creation and make them realize the significance and value of their knowledge by leading them to the world of physical chemistry.
We can take the lecture on the kinetics of heterogeneous reaction as an example.
Explaining the kinetic difference between homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions like solid-gas, solid-liquid and solid-solid, he presented a question, “Why do they burn powdered coal instead of lump coal in the boilers at thermal power plants?”. Then the students answered that the combustion of powdered coal is faster than that of lump coal because the surface area of powdered coal is larger.
He continued explaining that powdered coal flew about in rotary kilns, which resulted in a great loss, and that it raised the issue of forming it into small grains. Then he set forth a question for this and led them to its solution.
Therefore, the students could have chances to apply what they had learnt to practice and try harder to acquire more knowledge.
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Jo Mar 9, 2022
Jong Song Dae, a lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences, has been enhancing cognition efficiency by telling funny and persuasive short stories at appropriate time in his lecture.
Witty humour that teaches you something meaningful along with laughter with great persuasive power has greater influence than any kind of wordy speeches or writings.
In psychology lectures that help students to do successful work with people on the basis of the scientific understanding of various psychological phenomena and laws formed among people, he applied humour effectively to enable them to understand what they learnt in a plain way and to raise their faculties of thinking and eloquence.
Firstly, he found as many short stories as possible helpful to develop students’ thinking and told them at appropriate time, thus raising the level of popularity. In other words, he found good examples relevant to the content of the lecture and applied them.
For instance, “Baby’s job” was told in the lecture on the process of formation and development of human psychology, and “Did the cocks celebrate the New Year’s Day in such cold weather?” in the lecture on a desire.
He also collected a lot of short stories for the development of thinking and set occasions for appropriate application.
For example, he chose “The latest tooth” and “An expert in poultry” for types of thinking, “Oral thanks” for reaction of feelings, “Repeated rudeness” for types of hobbies and tastes, and “Pride of a squad leader” for types of human relationship.
Secondly, he raised cognition efficiency by making students analyze stories by themselves.
For example, in order to help them to have an understanding on their own of the formation and development of psychology in the childhood, he started with telling “I need more fingers.”.
It goes as follows.
A mother was teaching arithmetic to her 5-year-old son.
Mother: How much is eight plus five?
Son: Mum, I need more fingers…
He let students analyze it in their own ways.
Their argument produced several analyses: the child was not able to count it because he had only 10 fingers, the child was unable to count it because he had not learnt to count numbers over 10, that is, he did not know that he could spread out his fingers for continuous counting after counting to 10, etc.
As a result, they could grasp the gist of the lecture easily which said that in the childhood thinking is restricted to those that have immediate relation to the objects they can perceive and imagine at the moment and that object motion-centred thinking develops into intuitive depictive thinking.
As mentioned above, the employment of humour made it easier and faster for students to understand what they learnt, and heightened the faculties for its practical application to the life.
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Jo Mar 1, 2022
The contests ended on February 14, 2022.
The first contest was held from 4 to 7, February. About 22 300 contestants from tens of countries and regions including our country, China and India took part in it. 210 belonged to category 1, 3 191 to category 2, and 18 902 to category 3. 5 problems were set forth in category 1, none of which were challenge problems.
A total of 38 contestants won the first place in category 1 – 19 from the DPRK, 2 from China, 4 from India, 2 from Vietnam, 1 from Singapore, 1 from Germany, 1 from Portugal, 3 from the UK, 2 from the US, and 3 from Japan.
8 out of the 19 winners of our country are students at Kim Chaek University of Technology.
Our country accounts for the half of the world winners, and our university 21.052%, which rises to 42.105% in our country.
In the meantime, 1 from KUT took the first place in category 3.
The second contest went on from 11 to 14.
About 19 300 contestants from tens of countries and regions including our country, China and India took part. 170 belonged to category 1, 2 433 to category 2 and 16 755 to category 3. 4 problems were presented in category 1, none of which were challenge problems.
A total of 30 contestants in category 1 won the first place – 19 from our country, 2 from China, 5 from India, 1 from Argentina, 1 from the UK, and 2 from Japan.
All of the 8 students from Kim Chaek University of Technology took the first place in category 1.
19 winners from our country constitute 63.3% of the world winners, In the meantime, our university amounts to 26.67% in the world and 42.105% in our country.
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Jo Feb 13, 2022
Jang Jong Hyok, a researcher at Faculty of Applied Mathematics, has developed a teaching aid program for numerical analysis suitable for students’ psychological characteristics and engineering applications. Students are using this program to deepen their knowledge of numerical analysis.
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