Abstract
In this study we have attempted, firstly, to describe programming protocols developed for the teaching of an Electromagnetism course in the university degrees of Electrical Engineering and Energy Engineering, and secondly, to evaluate students’ satisfaction with the simulation practices through MATLAB® programming. The main objective of the protocols is to allow students to model and visualize the electric field and magnetic field (both static) and understand the approximation that is made when considering certain distributions of electric charges and electric currents. To evaluate the usefulness of this computational methodology, eighteen students from the two engineering degrees answered a questionnaire with seven questions related to the Electromagnetism course and to the benefits of using computer programming. Their answers are measured by a Likert scale. From the analysis of the results, we can conclude, in a general way, that the use of this methodology has positive effects in the learning of Electromagnetism in these two degrees.
Highlights
The emergence of personal computers paved the way for a significant change in the form of Teaching, for Science & Technology Teaching, as illustrated by Papert’s book on the use of computers in Teaching [1]
The use of computers in education comes from the 1960s, as Teodoro points out in his PhD thesis on mathematical modelling applied to the teaching of physics [2]
With the increasing development of the graphic potentialities associated with the various programming languages, simulation and modelling activities for the teaching of physics become increasingly appealing, enhancing the understanding/visualization of the physical phenomena
Summary
The emergence of personal computers paved the way for a significant change in the form of Teaching, for Science & Technology Teaching, as illustrated by Papert’s book on the use of computers in Teaching [1]. With the increasing development of the graphic potentialities associated with the various programming languages, simulation and modelling activities for the teaching of physics become increasingly appealing, enhancing the understanding/visualization of the physical phenomena. In this sense, the work developed by Chabay and Sherwood [13], which consisted in the application of a Python programming project for the teaching of Physics in an introductory engineering course, emphasizes the positive and negative aspects of the introduction of programming in the introductory Physics courses. The students’ opinion analysis is based on a Likert scale applied to a questionnaire with seven questions, essentially related to the use of this methodology
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