MATLAB for Primary and Secondary Schools

Courseware consists of free downloadable sets of curriculum materials for educators based on MATLAB and Simulink

Explore full course curriculum, or smaller sets of targeted lessons and examples and books.

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Course Curriculum

Pixels to Pictures

This courseware contains lesson plans and course documents required to run a project-based course where students learn the basics of programming while working with digital images. Students will understand image components and transform them using MATLAB to create their own digital story. (Recommended for ages 10+)

Bytes and Beats
An Introduction to Programming with MATLAB

Comprehensive lessons plans with dozens of hands-on activities for teaching the fundamentals of programming with MATLAB, while making music with sensors and an Arduino board. (Recommended for ages 10+)

Bridge to Mathematics

Example projects, handouts, and an instructor guide used for teaching the basics of writing MATLAB code for mathematical topics to high school students.

Introduction to MATLAB (book supplement)

Materials supplement the book MATLAB for Engineers by William Palm III and include lecture slides, MATLAB code, and Simulink models

Introduction to MATLAB Programming

Lecture slides, videos, and homework assignments for instruction on the MATLAB desktop, variables, script files, plots, conditional statements, loops, arrays, and good programming practices

Discovery-Based Learning

Lab assignments and quizzes to help students gain real-world engineering experience by solving complex problems with MATLAB and lab hardware

Engineering Models I

Videos, lecture slides, labs, and homework assignments used to teach high school students engineering problem-solving techniques

Discover Robotics
A Journey with MATLAB and Simulink

Lessons, videos, and group discussions to conduct a hands-on workshop on learning mobile robotics for students using the Arduino-based robot MiniQ 2WD. (Recommended for ages 10+)

Engineering Models II

Videos, lecture slides, labs, and homework assignments that illustrate how engineers use math to solve practical and complex problems

Engineering Problem Solving

Lab assignments and projects that teach engineering problem solving through sustainable engineering examples

Getting Started with MATLAB and Simulink for VEX Robotics

Detailed lesson plans and companion videos for teaching a robotics course using MATLAB, Simulink, and a VEX robot.

10 Tasks on Math Modeling

Collection of 10 fun tasks to engage and teach students mathematical concepts including analyzing the perfect basketball shot, cracking secret messages and helping stranded astronauts back home.

Modeling and Simulation of Multi-Physics Systems with MATLAB and Simulink

A downloadable book with accompanying code files from a course on modeling and simulation of engineering systems which span over electrical, hydraulic, and mechanical domains. (Recommended for ages 16+).

Programming the BBC micro:bit with MATLAB and Simulink

Teaching materials and examples that show how to program the micro:bit using the block diagram environment, Simulink and MATLAB

Lessons and Examples

MATLAB Basics

MATLAB Plot Gallery

Examples and code for many ways to display data graphically in MATLAB:

  • Line plot
  • Function plot
  • Histogram
  • Contour plot
  • Scatter plot
  • 3D plot

Graphical User Interfaces

Tutorial and guide for developing GUIs including:

  • Graphics components
  • Tables
  • Moving objects
  • Examples with code

Data Analysis Lessons

Lecture slides, videos, and exercises, covering topics including:

  • Interpolation
  • Basic descriptive statistics
  • Data presentation

Engineering, Science, and Physics

Here Comes the Hurricane! Saving Lives Through Logical Reasoning and Computer Science

Students use a hurricane tracking map to measure the distance of the eye of a hurricane to a city. Then they analyze MATLAB code that uses the distance formula repetitively to generate a table of data that tracks a hurricane at specific time intervals – a helpful approach for a dynamic situation like tracking storm movements.

Gears: Lift It Up!

Students learn about the trade-off between speed and torque when designing gear ratios. Student teams are challenged to design a gear set that will lift a given load at the fastest speed possible using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT and MATLAB.

Physics Lessons

MATLAB exercises covering topics including:

  • Simple harmonic motion
  • Damped vibrations
  • RC circuits
  • Resultant force

Truss App

MATLAB app for designing and exploring planar truss structures in physics, math, and engineering courses. Download includes:

  • Truss app
  • 4 sample problems
  • 3 video tutorials

Mathematics

Linear Equations Game

Student groups act as aerospace engineering teams competing to create linear equations to guide space shuttles safely through obstacles generated by this modeling game created with MATLAB.

Calculus Lessons

Lecture slides and problem sets covering topics including:

  • Numerical differentiation
  • Numerical integration
  • Max/min problems

Experiments with MATLAB

MATLAB app with 20 interactive STEM examples for exploring mathematical concepts including:

  • Iteration
  • Fibonacci numbers
  • Orbits
  • Shallow water equations
  • Morse code

Integration App

MATLAB app for visualizing integrals in an introductory calculus course.

Games

Precalculus Challenge

Challenge your students with precalculus problems using MATLAB and Cody. Developed by a former high school teacher. Problems include:

  • Length of a hypotenuse
  • Dimensions of a rectangle
  • Side of a rhombus

Game Projects

Projects for writing MATLAB programs to develop games including:

  • Battleship
  • Adventure
  • Connect Four
  • Othello
  • Card and dice games

Featured Books

Computer Programming with MATLAB is an introductory programming electronic textbook that illustrates general computer science and programming concepts with MATLAB. It assumes no background in mathematics that is not part of standard high school curricula.

Thinking Like an Engineer takes an active learning approach for a first course in engineering, covering basic engineering concepts and applying these concepts using MATLAB.

MATLAB: A Practical Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving teaches basic programming concepts including an introduction to MATLAB, vectors and matrices, loops, data structures, and file input and output.

Getting Started with Simulink provides a quick start guide for learning to use Simulink. It begins with an introduction to Simulink and takes you through creating, simulating, and using a model.