Virtual Labs for Teaching Engineering with MATLAB and Simulink

Overview

MATLAB is rooted in education, historically enabling students to implement, evaluate, and explore their understanding of course concepts. To continue to meet the ever-increasing demand for graduates with strong technical and problem-solving skills, MathWorks provides cloud-based tools and various resources for instructors including virtual labs, interactive exercises, educational videos, etc.

Engineering students often face challenges in comprehending complex engineering concepts due to the highly mathematical nature of the coursework, lack of innovative teaching tools, and limited resources preventing the use of commercially available lab equipment. There is an increasing demand for digital learning tools that create personalized learning experiences for students to support their understanding of fundamental engineering concepts. Teaching engineering courses using Virtual Labs is essential in deepening student conceptual understanding in an interactive medium since there are no time and place restrictions. Dr. Ayse Tekes from Kennesaw State University developed open-access Virtual Labs to simulate and visualize translational and rotational vibratory mechanisms, perform motion analysis of soft robots, and flexible machines, and obtain rapid responses of mechanisms and machines.

This talk will highlight a few examples of how the developed Virtual Labs can be used for teaching, and how MathWorks tools fit together to support your course development.

Highlights

We will discuss how to prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow by:

Empowering students to take ownership of their own learning with self-paced courses, MATLAB Apps, and interactive programming using Live Scripts
Mentoring students at scale with automated assessment and feedback in MATLAB Grader
Challenging students using real-world problems with Virtual Labs, hardware, IoT, and MATLAB Online
Enhancing student understanding of complex engineering topics with virtual labs developed by Kennesaw State University

About the Presenter

Evan Cosgrove is a Customer Success Engineer at MathWorks. He partners with universities to support teaching and research across Engineering, Science and Business disciplines. Evan earned his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Florida Institute of Technology where his research involved Optimal Control Theory of Free Boundary Problems.

Ayse Tekes is an associate professor in the mechanical engineering department at Kennesaw State University. Her research interests lie in designing, developing, modeling, and controlling flexible machines and soft robots, improving student understanding by developing 3D-printed laboratory equipment for vibrations and control theory courses, and creating virtual labs in MATLAB Simscape for undergraduate engineering courses.

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