Software-aided reliability education

Electronic reliability education is part of the curriculum in the School of Telecommunication Engineering at the University of Vigo. Good education on this topic can only be provided with practical training; therefore, our course on reliability includes fieldwork in collaboration with companies from the automotive sector. Students collect data, elaborate them, and obtain the reliability of manufactured systems. Because of time constraints in the course, the work was lacking of a more detailed study of the expected reliability. In an effort to improve the educative process, a reliability prediction tool was developed. The learning curve to use the tool is very fast, while including all the key ideas that students need to assimilate in this course. In this paper, the added value that this tool has introduced in our reliability course is presented, as well as an overview on learned lessons and future challenges on reliability education at our University