Computer Applications in Engineering Education最新文献

Mechanics dynamics course is challenging for mechanical engineering students. Strong abilities in abstract thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving are prerequisites for this course. Technology advancements in Industrial Revolution 4.0 have brought about significant changes in engineering education, and traditional teaching methods may no longer be sufficient to prepare students for the requirements of this industrial revolution. Relating to all Internet technologies, the Metaverse is an emerging environment that allows immersive interactive experiences to enhance comprehension. Combining Metaverse with constructivist learning, students can engage in engineering tasks and receive real-time feedback for deeper understanding. Education 5.0 emphasizes the use of new applications and technology to provide more humanized education, with an emphasis on students' social and emotional growth and solutions that improve life in society. However, since the Metaverse learning environment is still in its infancy, more empirical research is required regarding the application of the Metaverse environment using a constructivist approach to facilitate teaching and learning in engineering, particularly in the setting of mechanics dynamics. This research proposal aims to investigate and design a conceptual framework for the Metaverse environment as an additional learning aid in mechanical engineering education. The research findings could enhance the quality of mechanical engineering education, which is in line with the current Malaysia education blueprint that is, the incorporation of new educational technology aids and interventions. Additionally, the findings could provide new insights into the design of engineering curricula teaching practices and the Malaysian Science, Technology, Innovation, and Economy policy of providing new educational platforms that is, to nurture a creative society and a skilled workforce.

The rise in the number of students pursuing scientific and technical fields, along with the constraints of physical infrastructure and the difficulties posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to a reassessment of conventional laboratory learning. The shift towards virtual or remote laboratories is not only a response to these challenges but also a chance to enhance educational methodologies in science and engineering. This study aims to develop and evaluate a method for transforming traditional laboratories into distance laboratories for science and engineering education. The focus is on optimizing existing laboratory equipment and integrating low-cost IoT solutions to facilitate distance experiments while adopting a hybrid learning approach. This approach seamlessly integrates theory, simulations, remote experiments, and reflective activities. The study analyzed a diverse group of students from the electrical engineering discipline, evaluating their engagement, motivation, and learning outcomes. The preliminary results suggest an increase in student motivation and engagement, demonstrating improved analytical capacity and a more comprehensive understanding of experimental concepts. The implementation of IoT solutions in traditional laboratories can transform them into hybrid learning environments. This integration of practical and digital methods can address challenges and improve learning experiences. It emphasizes the importance of evolving teaching practices to engage and motivate students in the digital era.

Electromagnetics is a core course in the undergraduate electrical engineering curriculum that entails the study of electric and magnetic fields. Students, usually, perceive it as a challenging course since it requires them to build mental models of the spatial and time-varying electric and magnetic fields that cannot be seen by the naked eye. Moreover, the mathematics used in this subject is quite complex and abstract and can further compound the students' difficulties in connecting abstract math with real-life industry applications. To address these challenges, the author designed an undergraduate electromagentics course, which utilized certain pedagogical techniques to enhance the learning experience of the students. These pedagogies include extensive usage of MATLAB simulations, animations, and videos during the course that helps students visualize and conceptualize abstract concepts, usage of a comprehensive course-wide equation sheet, and highlighting the connection of the theory with real-life applications and industry jobs. This paper presents some of the simulations designed by the author as part of this course. Moreover, the equation sheet is also reproduced and access to its $��\; �L��\; ����A�����\; �T��\; ��E���\; �X�$ source is provided for the benefit of other instructors and students. The paper also presents results from the end-of-semester students' survey to measure the efficacy of these pedagogical techniques.

The further reform and development of engineering education courses can help improve the teaching quality of higher education institutions, implement the fundamental task of talent cultivation, and provide important support and channels for cultivating high-quality and supportive engineering technical talents. The traffic system simulation course is an applied science closely related to engineering technology. It mainly cultivates senior engineering technical talents engaged in research and development of transportation engineering, analysis of road traffic characteristics, and transportation planning and design. Considering the characteristics of the traffic system simulation course, this study puts forward the course teaching design based on computer virtual reality software. Combined with the training objectives of applied talents in the traffic system simulation course, this study focuses on how to reform the teaching content and teaching mode with the help of Vissim computer simulation software. The course teaching design refines and optimizes the teaching content by the use of computer software. The use of Vissim software in the course enriches the teaching content and methods and stimulates students' interest in learning. Through the guidance of active exploration and self-directed learning for students, the traffic system simulation course reform has created a more positive and effective learning environment for students, which helps to cultivate their exploratory spirit and innovative ability. The implementation of the course teaching reform has gradually improved students' learning initiative and ability to master course content, as well as their practical problem-solving abilities. Good teaching results have been achieved.

The expanding software industry has increased the demand for proficient programming professionals. However, more than technical expertise is needed for successful software development; code quality assurance and effective teamwork are also indispensable. Unfortunately, recent graduates often exhibit deficiencies in programming, code quality assurance, and teamwork skills, highlighting the need for improvements in these areas. In response to these challenges, this study presents ProgEdu4Web, an innovative Automated Programming Assessment System designed to evaluate code quality and teamwork proficiency in web programming. The system integrates automatic source code evaluation tools for static code analysis, ensuring timely feedback on coding quality issues. To assess the effectiveness of ProgEdu4Web, a questionnaire and hypothesis model was employed, surveying a cohort of 111 students enrolled in web programming classes. The study's findings demonstrate that the system significantly alleviated instructor workload while motivating students to enhance their web programming with good code quality and teamwork abilities.

In the ever-evolving landscape of 21st-century education, this research seeks to understand the challenges of on-time graduation for students in two related computing majors. In particular, we focus on the Universidad Católica del Norte computing engineering programs in Chile, specifically the “Computing and Informatics Civil Engineering” (ICCI) and “Computing and Informatics Execution Engineering” (IECI) programs. We developed a machine-learning-based model using random forests to predict delays in submissions of the final report of graduation projects, the key step in the graduation pipeline of the analyzed students. We had access to a data set comprised of 209 students in the period from 2013 to 2017, out of these students, only 111 completed all their graduation requirements. Thus, we focused on this subset of students for the analysis. Our analyses of results indicate that individual advisors minimally contribute to predicting timely or late submissions, emphasizing the need for a holistic approach. In contrast, the specific major, graduation modality, and time in the program play crucial roles, with GPA emerging as the most influential factor (24.06%). Notably, the “Professional Work” modality exhibits a moderate positive correlation with late submissions, contextualized by students' employment commitments. The study's predictive model offers actionable insights for educators and administrators, identifying at-risk students and advocating for personalized support strategies. This research contributes to the ongoing dialogue on enhancing educational outcomes by integrating data-driven approaches tailored to diverse student profiles.

To adapt to the new direction of engineering education reform in China under the background of new engineering, and to promote the transformation and upgrading of intelligent manufacturing professionals, a virtual simulation practice teaching system based on Internet technology is constructed. Relying on “online + offline” resources, experimental modules are designed, a course resource library is built, a digital cloud platform is developed, and a “One Body, Two Wings” virtual simulation teaching and training system is established. Practice has shown that the virtual simulation system has the advantages of immersion, interaction, imagination, and reality, which can meet the basic needs of users and provide a safe and immersive experimental operation experience. The comparative data on practical effectiveness shows that virtual simulation teaching has significantly improved students' theoretical knowledge, practical skills, and innovative ability, making graduates highly desirable by enterprises. The virtual simulation system not only enhances user experience, but also improves students' learning effect, professional cognitive ability, and professional practice ability. The system provides strong technical support for the cultivation of intelligent manufacturing professionals, and is an efficient and practical tool in the field of teaching and training, with broad application prospects.

Coulomb's law and Gauss's law are two fundamental laws in electrostatics that involve electric charges and electric fields. These concepts that are not visible physically in real life can be challenging for students to understand, especially when it involves complex charge distributions. This paper presents a MATLAB-based graphical user interface (GUI) to visualise the concept of Coulomb's law and Gauss's law as well as a serious snake game to reinforce users' knowledge. This MATLAB GUI features a diverse range of 3-dimensional (3D) visualisations illustrating electric field attributes such as electric force, charge distribution and electric flux. These visualisations dynamically adapt to user-defined parameters, offering a rich and varied exploration of the electric field's characteristics without confining the scope to a specific count of models. In Coulomb's law section, the GUI plots the electric forces in 3-D for dipole, three-point charges, and unlimited charge. The Gauss's law section consists of windows for illustration of the fundamentals of Gauss's law for the electric field, and the illustration for the application of Gauss's law in finding the electric field for a point charge, infinite line charge and infinite plane charge. The serious snake game developed in this work allows students to engage in quizzes related to Coulomb's law and Gauss's law to serve as a tool for reinforcing their learning outcomes. The MATLAB-based GUI was chosen as the platform due to its excellent visualisation capabilities, ease of programming and capability to act as a powerful tool to enhance the learning of Coulomb's law and Gauss's law for students.

This study proposes and demonstrates how computer-aided methods can be used to extend qualitative data analysis by quantifying qualitative data, and then through exploration, categorization, grouping, and validation. Computer-aided approaches to inquiry have gained important ground in educational research, mostly through data analytics and large data set processing. We argue that qualitative data analysis methods can also be supported and extended by computer-aided methods. In particular, we posit that computing capacities rationally applied can expand the innate human ability to recognize patterns and group qualitative information based on similarities. We propose a principled approach to using machine learning in qualitative education research based on the three interrelated elements of the assessment triangle: cognition, observation, and interpretation. Through the lens of the assessment triangle, the study presents three examples of qualitative studies in engineering education that have used computer-aided methods for visualization and grouping. The first study focuses on characterizing students' written explanations of programming code, using tile plots and hierarchical clustering with binary distances to identify the different approaches that students used to self-explain. The second study looks into students' modeling and simulation process and elicits the types of knowledge that they used in each step through a think-aloud protocol. For this purpose, we used a bubble plot and a k-means clustering algorithm. The third and final study explores engineering faculty's conceptions of teaching, using data from semi-structured interviews. We grouped these conceptions based on coding similarities, using Jaccard's similarity coefficient, and visualized them using a treemap. We conclude this manuscript by discussing some implications for engineering education qualitative research.

This article presents the LIZGAIRO project, which aims to promote students’ understanding of fundamental engineering concepts and their ability to apply them to solve real-world problems through project-based learning. The project was run over a 3-year period, with students from the telecommunication degree at the Universidade de Vigo. The Scrum framework, an agile project management framework, was used to promote effective teamwork, active participation and ownership among students. The article describes the effectiveness of the project and its impact on students' learning success, delivered project quality and overall skills acquisition. After implementing LIZGAIRO, both teachers and students reported a positive impact on student learning, with high levels of essential skill acquisition and project quality. Although learning the framework fundamentals takes time for both teachers and students, the adaptability of Scrum and the use of continuous assessment were found to be beneficial.