CircuitsU is a free web-based tutoring system designed to help people learn the fundamental methods
for analyzing electric circuits. The system is interactive and provides a step-by-step approach to solving circuit problems, guiding users through each stage of
the analysis with instant feedback and visual representations.
CircuitsU is suitable for students, instructors, and self-learners alike, offering randomly generated problems,
detailed solutions, and a structured environment to develop and reinforce circuit analysis skills at the learner’s own pace. The site focuses on
linear circuits, but nonlinear circuits (analog electronics) and more advanced design problems might be added in the future.
Since Fall 2022, more than 1,000 students from universities and colleges in the U.S. and abroad have solved over 60,000 problems on CircuitsU.
Instructors
Follow these three simple steps to use CircuitsU in your classes. They usually take less than 3 minutes.
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First, create a new class at the beginning of the semester.
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Then, build the set of homework problems that you want to assign to your students or leave the default assignments that are currently set for a standard college-level Linear Circuit Analysis course.
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Finally, enroll students in your course.
The problems that the students receive are generated randomly based on the type and level of difficulty that you select. You will be able
to monitor the progress and scores of each student in the class, upload files (e.g. PowerPoint presentations, pdf files, images, etc.) and share them with the students.
Similar to other web-based learning management systems, you can set different deadlines each assignment, extend the deadline for particular students, use different
grading schemes, etc.
To enroll students in a course, you need to paste a list of email addresses (one email per student) to which CircuitsU
will send automatic registration emails. The students will use this email as their user name and, the first time when they login, they will be asked to set a password.
Once the students login into their accounts, they will be able to see the homeworks that you assigned to them.
Please send an email to support@circuitsu.com
if you need an instructor account.
Once you have an account you can use it to create multiple classes as long as your instructor account remains active (normally, accounts should never expire).
Students
If you are a new student, you need to set a password first by clicking the link in the email that the instructor sent you to access the class.
Your email address represents your user name and can be used to recover your password if necessary.
Besides your email, you do not need to provide any other personal information such as name, school, etc. in order to use the website.
Every problem in CircuitsU is generated randomly with a pre-defined level of difficulty and each student will receive a different
set or problems. You can practice solving as many problems as you want, however, in order to get the maximum score for a particular homework assignment, you need to finish correctly the minimum
number of problems assigned by the instructor before the deadline. If you cannot solve a problem, you can click the «Help», «See answer», or «Show solution»
buttons, however, in the last two cases you will not receive any points for that problem and you will need to solve another problem again.
CircuitsU is specifically designed to provide feedback and help you at each step while solving a problem.
Topics
CircuitsU covers simple topics such as charge, current, energy, power, Ohm’s Law, Kirchhoff’s Current and Voltage Laws,
and series-parallel combinations, progressing toward more advanced concepts like nodal and mesh analysis in DC, AC and time-dependent circuits, superposition, source transformations,
Norton and Thévenin equivalent circuits, resonance, two-port networks, Bode plots, AC power, three-phase systems, magnetically-coupled networks, transient responses in RLC circuits,
Laplace transforms, SPICE simulations (using LTspice) and other.
Please check the WebBook for a complete list of topics.
WebBook
The WebBook is a free online textbook, in which the different sections of the book correspond to the different types of homework assignments on the website.
The WebBook also provides solved and practice problems at the end of each section and can be used independently from homework assignments.
Instructors. and non-students can take advantage of the WebBook
to teach, learn and practice problems in linear circuits.
Others
If you are a returning student or if you are simplly interested in learning about electric circuits, technics to analyzing them, or simply want to test your skills in linear circuits,
you can solve the randomly generated problems at the end of each chapter in the WebBook. You do not need an account to browse the
WebBook, however you need to login to review and solve problems.
Why use CircuitsU?
CircuitsU contains over 1,000 numerical, analytical, design, graphical and other types of problems.
Each of these problems is randomly generated and designed to teach a particular concept. All problems have detailed solutions.
- Promotes active learning over passive reading or lecture watching.
- Encourages mastery learning by requiring correct answers at each step before moving on.
- Avoids the black box problem of calculators or software doing everything by showing all intermediate steps.
- Helps prevent common mistakes by providing context-specific feedback.
- Great for remote learning or blended instruction.
