Interactive Teaching Reform for “Principles of Automatic Control” Course Based on Professional Cases

Abstract

“Principles of Automatic Control” is an introductory course for engineering majors, requiring high fundamental physics and mathematics knowledge. However, the traditional theoretical teaching methods based on PPT or blackboard writing have the following problems: 1) For students who are not good at mathematics, it is difficult to understand the content taught by the teacher in class, and self-study after class is challenging to understand; 2) For students who are good at mathematics, they can cope with exams, but they cannot use theoretical knowledge to solve practical professional problems. In response to the above considerations, this paper puts forward two suggestions for curriculum reform. 1) Interactive teaching: teachers design half-blank handouts in advance, where the essential knowledge points are included and core mathematical derivations are completed by students and teachers together; 2) Professional case-based teaching: all knowledge points of automatic control can be studied through 2–3 professional cases according to the major. In this way, not only the theoretical level of students can be improved, and their ability to solve practical professional problems can be strengthened.