Evidence-Based Control Engineering Education: Evaluating the LCSD Simulation Tool

Loreto Marin,Ruben Heradio,Sebastian Dormido,Jose Manuel Diaz,Luis De La Torre,Hector Vargas

doi:10.1109/access.2020.3023910

Abstract

The advance in control engineering education needs well-designed studies that validate what methods and tools work best. This paper addresses the lack of empirical evidence supporting innovations in control engineering education by proposing a methodology that works at different abstraction levels. Hence, innovations' impact on students' performance can be statistically analyzed either globally or locally by examining competencies or fine-grained indicators, respectively. The article reports the application of the methodology for evaluating an interactive simulation tool, named LCSD, on 101 students at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso in Chile. According to the experimental results, LCSD is an effective free alternative to enhance the student's skills on control system analysis for our automatic control course. Also, some improvements have been identified for future LCSD versions.

Highlights

Learning the fundamentals of automatic control requires acquiring a solid base on maths and physics to understand the theory thoroughly
Students need to learn how to interpret a variety of inter-related diagrams, whose trade-offs are crucial for the analysis and design of control systems [1]
We have evaluated Linear Control System Design (LCSD) on an automatic control course of the master degree on Electrical Engineering at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso (PUCV), in Chile

Summary

Introduction

Learning the fundamentals of automatic control requires acquiring a solid base on maths and physics to understand the theory thoroughly. Students need to learn how to interpret a variety of inter-related diagrams, whose trade-offs are crucial for the analysis and design of control systems [1]. Several Interactive Learning Tools (ILT) have been proposed to boost students’ understanding on these topics [2]–[15], their real effectiveness has not been validated in most cases. This problem has been pointed out by several authors [16]–[22], who claim that decision making on pedagogical interventions to enhance the students’

Methods

Results

Conclusion