Active learning has been an important trend for a long time. Even so, it commonly becomes secondary to traditional lectures and transmission teaching. Thus, the students are responsible for their own activity and not everyone succeeds.At the introduction of the new national framework regulations for engineering education in 2012, Aalesund University College has restructured several taught modules to emphasise active learning as primary mode of learning, for instance in Microcontrollers, which is compulsory for both electronic and computer engineering. A key feature is early practical exercises forming a basis for learning of theory.Qualitative research methods from social sciences have given us a far deeper evaluation and analysis than we could have achieved with established quality assurance practice. We collected data mainly from focus groups with students, and supplemented this by interviewing teachers.Active learning and lab exercises contribute both to well-being and learning, even though we have not yet found the optimal form. Students highlight a valuable interaction between lectures and lab, and we believe there is room for better exploitation thereof. For many students, the workload is not justified by the learning achieved. We see these observations in relation to existing theory from the literature and discuss possible improvements.

No abstract