Facilitating learning progress in a first control course via Matlab apps

Abstract

Abstract It is well-known that students learn substantially more if a lecture is complemented by active inquiry-based activities and problem solving than from only passively listening to a lecture. Naturally, this requires the teacher to include elements into the course such as laboratories, group projects, tutorials and interactive e-learning modules. For the most effective teaching concept, all such components of the course work are tightly intertwined and work together towards the same goal and learning objectives. Therefore, we show in this paper how Matlab apps can be included into the wider effort of learning facilitation in an introductory automatic control course. Among other advantages, Matlab apps can offer an unlimited number of exercises and examples that can be generated automatically, they offer interactive interfaces that can include gamification aspects such as levels and highscore lists to increase the motivation, and they can be done at the students’ own pace. The course evaluation and the feedback from students at the University of Stuttgart suggest that the inclusion of the Matlab apps presented in this paper is indeed a success.