The benefits of the constructionist theory as a learning paradigm are widely recognized, among other reasons, because it offers to instructional designers an alternative set of values that may significantly influence and provide consistency to any Instructional System Design (ISD) model. Relevant characteristics of the two approaches are described to identify the real necessities of undergraduate students to avoid deficiencies in static classrooms; these characteristics support significant learning environments where students of IT-related curricula are actively related to implementing their own public artifacts, passing through passive to active learning states. Thus, from our perspective the constructionist theory in combination with an ISD model can be useful in developing an embedded systems course for undergraduate education. This approach is supported by a software/hardware tool that was created to enhance the teaching–learning process through hands-on experimentation. Finally, the results of a comprehensive assessment of the course effectiveness are presented. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A web platform, called Proteus (http://www.visualphysics.net/pweb), has been developed by a team in Nanyang Technological University. This platform is designed for education and academic research, and is free to use. It provides a place where students, educators, and academic researchers can easily create and share their computer models of physical systems described using Modelica, a non-proprietary, object-oriented, equation-based language for physical system modeling. It comes with a web-based, graphical modeling, and simulation tool called ProteusGWT (http://www.visualphysics.net/ProteusGWT). ProteusGWT is web-based and uses an intuitive, graphical component-oriented approach to the modeling of physical systems spanning multiple domains including systems containing mechanical, hydraulic, thermal, control, electrical, electronic, electric power, or process-oriented subcomponents. It synthesizes state-of-the-art web technologies (e.g., HTML5, GWT, and cloud computing), computational methods for physical systems modeling, and simulation to create a computing environment that is widely deployable and scalable. Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a development toolkit from Google for building and optimizing complex web-based applications. It allows developers to create and maintain complex JavaScript applications in Java language. Proteus allows anyone with a computer or browser-enabled device to be able to use it. Hence, anyone can contribute their computer models of physical systems to this platform. As this platform grows, it could turn out to be an online interactive repository for all kinds of physical system models, for example, a student may examine complete computer models of a motorcycle, a refrigerator, a burglar alarm, or robot arm and learn about how they work. He or she could run simulations, modify the models, or create new designs and share with others. There is nothing quite like this currently on the Internet. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This paper presents the development of a game-based virtual laboratory environment for gear train design. This virtual laboratory environment goes beyond static demonstrations or conventional computer simulations and provides the students with the flexibility to perform various experiments related to the fundamental law of gearing and the concepts of planetary gear motion. In this virtual laboratory environment, the students, the instructor and the teaching assistant are represented by and interact as virtual characters (avatars). The scripted scenario for the laboratory exercise was first piloted in a junior-level course for mechanical engineering majors. Assessment tools such as pre- and post-experiment tests are an integral part of the laboratory environment and form the basis for providing different levels of support to the students at every step of the laboratory exercises. Furthermore, the laboratory environment can be equipped with functionality for monitoring the students' progress and learning outcomes, thus enabling skill-based assessment. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents a proposal for the detection of programming source code similitude in academic environments. The objective of this proposal is to provide support to professors in detecting plagiarism in student homework assignments in introductory computer programming courses. The developed tool, CODESIGHT, is based on a modification of the Greedy String Tiling algorithm. The tool was tested in one theoretical and three real scenarios, obtaining similitude detections for assignments ranging from those that contained code without modifications to assignments containing insertions of procedural instructions inside the main code. The results verified the efficiency of the tool at the first five levels of the plagiarism spectrum for programming code, in addition to supporting suspicions of plagiarism in real scenarios. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Mobile communications have become one of the key points in the development of Information Society. Therefore the market demands to qualify engineers with a good formation on this topic, and more specifically related with good knowledge about the design and deployment of mobile and wireless networks and services of different technologies. For this reason most of the graduate and post-graduate programs in Electrical and Electronic engineering studies consider at least one specific subject focused on mobile communications. However, the large number of concepts and the different existing technologies could make this subject very difficult for the student. This article presents a software tool for the design of second and third generation radio access networks, which makes easier the understanding and application of theoretical concepts, giving the student a more practical and realistic view of the subject. Furthermore as this tool has been applied for the regulation on mobile communications in different countries, the students can get some practical knowledge about the work in mobile communications in real world applications. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Computer Programming competence is a good research field in which students of Computer Science can be assisted by an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). An ITS can guide the students in their learning process proposing the corresponding learning activities for each particular student. In this article, we will outline a proposal about how to use eLearning standard and automatic assessment techniques to build an ITS for learning to program. In addition, we will show the implemented system to test our proposal and how we have evaluated it with students in our university. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents a novel computer-based tool that has proven useful for students to both implement and validate the design of reactive systems using the Teleo-Reactive approach. The design and implementation of the tool and the proposed laboratory exercises are described. The tool, then, is a useful framework for tackling the synthesis of control systems for reactive systems. The results of the tests on efficiency with undergraduate students are also discussed. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Over the past few years, a number of software applications have been proposed to tackle the administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs and contents such as CMS (Content Management System) and LMS (Learning Management System). However, CMS focuses on the administration and development of websites, while LMS is mainly focused on the management of training through the use of learning objects. CMS and LMS have features that can be used in conjunction in order to create educational environments which enhance the teaching–learning process in classrooms. This article presents a hybrid management system called Athena for multi-device educational content providing a set of Web-based interfaces for managing, presenting, and generating PHP-based applications with educational content, reducing both the time and effort invested during the development process of this type of software. Athena borrows the main features of both CMS and LMS in order to manage and reuse educational content. Athena allows the user to develop platform-independent multi-device educational software using existing educational content. Athena aims to provide new forms of accessibility to educational content, envisioning a better future for online education. To demonstrate Athena's capabilities, we have presented a case study for generating a multi-device physics course to emphasize our contribution. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

We present the experience of the authors teaching mathematics to freshmen engineering students with the help of the open source computer algebra system Sage. We describe some teaching resources and present an ad hoc distribution of Sage used by the authors. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In recent years, software engineering education has rapidly changed to incorporate more realistic ways of learning. More frequently the software industry requires more skilled and qualified staff; however at the university level students are young, inexperienced, and relatively homogeneous in background and abilities. This article describes an approach that integrates a student teamwork methodology (TSPi) and project-based learning (PBL) to improve software project managerial skills in undergraduate students. As complementary support, a computational tool, the Teamwork Platform for Software Engineering Education, has been developed to establish an interactive software engineering course with local software industry collaboration. Experimental results show that a set of software metrics was defined to demonstrate performance improvement of 45 students following our approach. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Modern corporations, institutions, universities and schools consider e-education as a way of educating larger groups of students in less time and of reducing the use of various resources. Since setting up a web-system for e-education requires a significant amount of time, as well as the necessity of having a computer and other resources, the assessment of the goals and desired effects of the online system should be made in the preparation phase. It is important to highlight that only putting course contents on the web, without using appropriate pedagogical models and principles, without appropriate means of communication between participants and instructors and without the use of modern information technologies to present the learning content is not enough to fulfil educational goals. It should be noted that, after the substantial initial investment and excitement about the possibilities of e-education, many sources of difficulty and dissatisfaction regarding online learning have emerged. Most e-learning studies propose possible improvements in course material, with little attempt to explore the learners' dimension, context, pedagogical considerations or technology aspects. In this article, we have analysed the aspects that need to be considered when designing an e-learning platform for engineering education and we have proposed a methodology, based on the Quality Function Deployment approach, useful for the preparation phase of distance learning systems. Finally, we have explained the impact of new information technologies (Web3D technologies) on online engineering education and highlighted how these tools have been implemented in the e-learning platforms for mechanical engineering that we have developed. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Visual information plays an important role in almost all areas of our life. Today, much of this information is represented and processed digitally. Digital image processing is any form of signal processing for which the input is an image, such as a photograph or video frame; the output of image processing may be either an image or a set of characteristics or parameters related to the image. In this context, implementation and evaluation of image processing algorithms are complex tasks that require highly technical and multidisciplinary skills. Graduate students are required to develop both practical and theoretical exercises to understand how an algorithm works; however, they have to learn in an individual manner without adequate support. This article presents an innovative Project-Based Learning approach to teach image processing algorithms using an FPGA-based tool as the main support. Thus, instead of learning heavy programming tasks and mathematical functions, students are led step by step through five phases and then allowed to experiment with different algorithms. This article evaluates the proposed tool and shows results with diverse algorithms. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents an educational platform developed to support the teaching of compensators design in a basic control theory course. The application consists of a graphical user interface in MATLAB®, and further connection to the plant under study through the data acquisition toolbox, and a data acquisition card. The developed system allows the students to experiment with parameter changes in the controllers under study, such as gain, overshoot, settling time, and peak time, and visualize results obtained from simulated or real signals. The methodology is based on the frequency response analysis. Typical Bode, root locus, and unit step response plots are easily obtained for a system before and after compensation, in a dynamical way. A modular design allows the students to easily upgrade the application in order to include further methodologies. Results derived from its use in undergraduate and graduate courses are presented. MATLAB is a registered trademark of The MathWorks, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article details our experience involving the intensive use of mobile technologies in the pedagogical activities of a Computer Engineering (CE) course. We describe three learning projects in order to illustrate how these activities can impact learning, allowing a stronger engagement of students and creating a dynamic pedagogical approach. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this article, we present a semester-long study on using smartphone devices in computing engineering education. We developed Sortko, an Android-based smartphone application for learning sorting algorithms, an important undergraduate computer science topic. The application consists of four main components—the module for interactive sorting, the scaffolding module, the motivational module, and the graphical user interface module, each with a distinct role of helping students in learning sorting algorithms. Our research methodology included data collection with administered two surveys, collected exam results and recorded application usage data. Analysis of the collected data shows our approach is an effective way of learning sorting algorithms. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Academic courses have started to feature an expanding variety of innovative ways in using different technologies in order to improve effectiveness of teaching and learning process. Among these technologies Wikis are getting important role among teachers, academics, and educators in general as teaching as well as collaboration tool. This article presents overview and systematization of Wiki Learning System in a form of educational Wiki patterns with a goal to support easier and more coherent integration of collaboration and interaction in teaching and learning activities. Results of several consecutive years of using Wiki Learning System and Wiki-based methodological teaching approaches based on Wiki patterns are presented regarding final exams' outcomes of university students. The outcomes' evaluation is based on data collected from faculty archive as well as using survey–questionnaire-based method. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This research was conducted within the framework of a National Science Foundation sponsored summer Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) students. This research considers small-scale and mathematical models of simple one-story structures that are subjected to free and base-motion excitations and installed with and without passive damping devices to gain an understanding of their dynamic behavior while reviewing active and semi-active damping means being applied and researched today. Using computer programming and numerical methods, the goal is to understand and counteract catastrophic disasters to structures caused by earthquakes. The research is broken down into a number of MATLAB simulations and experiments in order to understand basic dynamic and control features required to design earthquake resilient buildings. These experiments include free vibration experiments to test for the stiffness of columns for different heights and to test for the natural frequency and damping ratio of a one-story structure under different mass loads. Active PD control was then applied to an experimental system experiencing accelerations attributed to the Northridge 1994, Kobe 1995, El Centro 1940, and Mendocino 1992 earthquakes. Robustness comparisons were made between (1) P control; (2) D control; and (3) PD control for the above earthquake inputs to the shaker. A fuzzy logic controller was developed to effectively control transient vibrations. The uniqueness of this control concept is that the fuzzy control continuously varies the damping characteristics of a semi-active tuned mass damper (TMD). It was concluded that a fuzzy logic based TMD was more effective than a regular passive TMD, by providing half the settling times. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Software development processes are inherently complex and require the collaboration and coordination of expert teams. The acquisition of both analysis and design competences as well as social skills should thus be the leitmotiv of courses devoted to software engineering learning. However, these aspects are often ignored and excessive importance is attached to the implementation stage. The learning framework described in this article was designed to teach students these competences and skills by means of an immersive learning experience where, working in a team, each student has to play the role of a software developer and address problems linked to requirements specification, design, and the software development process as a whole. Collaborative strategies of this kind have proven to be very successful in active learning processes, to which we have added continuous assessment mechanisms based on rubrics to provide early feedback to students. Additionally, and taking into account the characteristics of the new European Space for Higher Education, we have designed an online personal learning environment (PLE) that facilitates anytime–anywhere communications and provides a suitable social space for the exchange of information, which is crucial to the success of any teamwork effort. More specifically, we propose a learning activity based on Web 2.0 services and adapted to this particular PLE. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents an educational tool for the teaching of Grafcet language for programmable logic controllers (PLC) and its application in the subject “Digital Devices for Industrial Automation” in a Industrial Electronics Engineering course. Apart from a simulator with its own editor, the tool includes a syntax controller with the purpose of maintaining Grafcet standard. In this way, the tool makes the validation of the implemented scheme easier. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A simple experiment such as the batch distillation of an ethanol–water binary mixture can be performed in a 3-h laboratory session using a very rudimentary apparatus consisting of a still pot and two thermocouples. Yet, the results can lead to very interesting insights to distillation and chemical engineering thermodynamics. The present article describes how one can exploit this simple laboratory experiment to teach these various aspects of chemical engineering. In addition, several simple calculations using computer software such as Mathematica® are performed to explain, interpret and reproduce theoretically all the gathered experimental data during the laboratory session. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The emergence of the Internet of Things increases the demand on embedded computer systems, which in turn requires the availability of specialized engineers in the near future. Several universities commenced embedded-systems programming courses to complement students' skills by introducing specific firmware development techniques. Hands-on labs with real hardware interaction is restricted to the time students are in the laboratory whilst virtual-laboratories provide more flexibility at the caveat that students do not improve hardware manipulation skills as they cannot physically inter-actuate with real devices. We argue that students' abilities can be increased by providing them with a sensor board with reduced computation and communication capabilities to work with at home. Students increase the time spent manipulating the device; moreover, their motivation is also increased as they can put their effort on developments of their interest. The article presents the experience carried out at the virtual-course of Embedded-Systems at the UOC. The developed technology, the methodology, and the feedback from students are presented here, and corroborate the benefits of the chosen methodology. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents a teaching–learning methodology for the course “Hydropower and Ocean Power” in the Master of Renewable Energy Program at the Technical University of Cartagena (Spain). In line with the famous “Bologna Declaration,” a new teaching approach is proposed, in order to ensure that students acquire skills related to the ability of analyzing and designing Hydraulic Machinery. The roles of the tutor facilitator, as well as the use of freehand sketches and the Matlab programming to optimize the management of commercial CFD packages, are some specific features of the project. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A ubiquitous teaching assistant (u-TA) system is developed using software agent techniques to facilitate teaching purposes and often used for a virtual classroom or virtual laboratory. In these kinds of virtual learning environments, u-TA is often used to assist learners by using desktop computers or laptops. With the development of u-learning, u-TA should consist of good mobility for guiding students and answering students' questions on mobile handheld devices. Therefore, the mobility of u-TA should be enhanced. This study proposes a system that uses the u-TA framework to construct a context-aware and location-based service (LBS) guiding system to introduce the essence of Service-Learning courses to students and help them browse the content of the course resources on campus. We gave a case study for using our proposed system to promote the Service-Learning courses in Feng Chia University, Taiwan. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system. The experimental results show that the proposed system can help students enhance understanding on Service-Learning courses in school and encourage students to participate in these curricula. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this study, a highly instructive and novel remote laboratory platform using up to date software and hardware units is designed to teach main concepts of Electrical Engineering with the help of web-based simulations and remote accessible experiments in real time. Interactive experimental applications for direct current (DC) motors and several electrical circuits are carried out in this study to test the efficiency of the system. First, mathematical model of each simulation is developed in MATLAB and then all models are transferred into .NET platform by means of MATLAB Builder for NE toolbox. A dynamic library for each model is also created using NE toolbox. Then, all libraries are embedded into an interactive web page designed in ASP.NET platform. Data transmission between the server and the real experimental set is established by a microprocessor via the USB port to achieve the experimental studies over the Internet in real time. While remote experiments are being performed, data obtained by the experimental set are simultaneously transferred to the MATLAB. Then, the system generates both graphical and numerical results about the current experiment and all results are sent to a user-friendly web interface to give users some feedback on the experiment. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

One of the major goals of learning is to obtain knowledge and skills. It is therefore of importance to study the following issues: how the online performances of learners may be extracted from their learning portfolios, how their learning motivations can be improved, and whether their learning achievements can be improved as a result. This study extracts online performances from portfolios and shows that there is a positive correlation between online performance and learning achievement. Subjects of the experimental group were teamed by complementation of knowledge, whereas subjects of the control group were teamed by random. Final ANOVA tests showed that there was a significant difference in both online performances and learning achievements. Subjects of the experimental group were better motivated due to complementation of knowledge; this in turn resulted in better online performances and learning achievements for these subjects. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The importance of correctly identifying a student in a distance learning environment comes from the necessity to avoid fraud and the fact that the student plays the central role in this kind of learning process claims that the student should be correctly assessed, identified, and authenticated. The Learning Management Systems available nowadays provides only the user authentication engine based on username/password, which increases the susceptibility to fraud, when the authentication certainty level about the actual user, given for this mechanism, is practically void. In this article we proposed the safe and fast approach for authentication system for distance learning. The certification methods of face recognition were adopted in proposed system. The high recognition rate of the implemented system in four cities of Iran shows that the distance education systems are more secure and reliable than the traditional authentication system, and as a result, promote the development of distance education, in future. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

How to teach students to design in the classroom? When is experience crucial to do design? In particular, how to teach design patterns to students who are beginning to know the importance of a good design? Experience is essential to understand and apply patterns in an effective way. Generally, novice users are not good at working in real experiences while they are good at learning new techniques and methods for designing. In this work, we show the results of teaching patterns using an artificial intelligent assistant that helps novice developers during the design process. Our assistant is an interface agent that observes novice users working, and when it detects that a design pattern can be applied, it makes a suggestion justifying its opinion. Thus, students understand when and where a pattern could be applied. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Computer programming has a technological part and a creative part; it involves specific technical aspects of programming languages and creative aspects to find the best solutions for different problem domains. The programming learning process encompasses a group of different teacher–student techniques that are put into practice. These techniques have the object of learning a programming language to solve real problems; in this learning process we must include good software development practices of analysis and design so the novice programmer disciplines himself into developing quality software. To improve the learning programming process we use techniques and methods of software development adapting them to the context of courses in programs of the curricula. There are different methods to help us develop quality software; this article is a case study of using PSP (Personal Software Process) method and XP (eXtreme Programming) techniques on curricula's first programming course for engineering students, as support of the learning process of a programming language, and acquiring good software development habits. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

We present an innovative educational computer application for undergraduate students enrolled in a Construction Surveying Fundamentals course. The application includes an Interactive Virtual Environment for learning surveying concepts and practices, and an e-assessment tool that measures the individual student's cognitive and practical abilities. Results of a pilot study with 31 undergraduate students and 2 faculties showed that the software was perceived as easy to use, useful, and effective at measuring the individual student's performance. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

People engaged in fracture mechanics education recognise the need to combine theory and effective practice in order to enhance students' skills in this field. Nevertheless, real experiments are not always possible for education purposes because they require too much time, involve specialised equipment and specimen preparation. In these circumstances, numerical simulation is a valid alternative to guarantee the link between theory and practice. In this article, a computer application capable of simulating the fatigue crack growth (FCG) of planar cracks under mode-I cyclic loading is presented. This tool incorporates an extensive range of real significance problems found in the context of FCG. Besides, an intuitive and user-friendly interface was provided in order to improve its functionality and to allow the user to define quickly and easily fundamental input data. Default values are proposed for less experienced users, seeking the minimum effort in numerical model definition. The use of this software in educational context is expected to provide a major insight into FCG phenomenon. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Based on the network simulation method, the educational software FATSIM-A has been developed to simulate transient, non-lineal, conjugate problems of fluid flow and solute transport in porous media. Darcy flow and conservation laws in the form of stream function formulation, as well as boundary conditions, provide the partial differential equations of the mathematical model. The network model, based on the spatial discretization of these equations following a few rules, is simulated in the electric circuit simulation code PSPICE. Time remains as a continuous variable in the model. Interface communication is user friendly and immediate through the window environment created in the visual C# source code. The resulting simulation data (concentration and stream function isolines), including animations, are graphically shown in the environment of FATSIM-A itself or using MATLAB, due to the suitable routines implemented in the software. The power and reliability of FATSIM-A have been verified by comparing its solution with standard benchmark problems such as those of Henry and Elder. The program can be used as a low cost laboratory educational tool for teaching groundwater flow with solute transport processes, such as saline intrusion, salt lake, and salt dome. Furthermore, the software can be used as a numerical tool for investigation. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Simulation is a powerful tool that has a very important role in the different areas of research, development, and education. In particular, simulation tools are widely used in robotics. In this article, we present an active learning experience based on simulation tools in the framework of robotics courses taught at engineering degrees. It is well known that the field of robotics involves many disciplines taught in higher education, such as mechanics, electronics, or computer science. In the context of a robotics course for an Industrial Engineering Masters degree, the different topics addressed can benefit from the use of simulation tools. Additionally, the benefits of active learning activities have been widely acknowledged and discussed. The main contribution of this work is the simulation tools fully integrated in the project-based activity designed. Thus, one of the contributions is the software provided, developed with a clear teaching focus, and the successful teaching experience with a high academic level thanks in part to the simulation tools. Here, we describe the methodology and the new simulation tools, RobotScene and SGRobot, developed for this project-based learning activity. This activity has been carried out successfully for several years; and our experience is that it motivates the students and improves their understanding of the theoretical concepts involved. We also present the academic results that support the benefits of the activity presented. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article introduces a computer program for computer-aided education about Mohr's circle and its practical use. The instructional tool has been implemented as part of a finite element analysis program, VisualFEA. The proposed approach to teaching and learning Mohr's circle is distinguished from previous work by its association with practical analysis models. The Mohr's circle is displayed and operated on the basis of stress data obtained from finite element analysis whereas arbitrarily assumed numerical values are used in other programs. The analysis can be extended to elasto-plastic models with various yield criteria. Thus, the program can be regarded not only as an instructional module for studying Mohr's circle itself, but also as a training tool for exercising its practical application. This article describes the characteristics of the program's educational features and suggests important points for teaching and learning Mohr's circle and related subjects using VisualFEA. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Nowadays, there has been a real change in the traditional (Mexican) methodology for learning and teaching; the teaching of electronic sciences needs to identify the real necessities of students to avoid deficiencies in static classrooms. The benefits of the constructionist theory as a learning paradigm are widely recognized, because they support significant learning environments where students are actively related in implementing their own public artifacts; passing through passive to active learning states. Thus, the constructionist theory stresses the need to understand the student's thinking and to encourage them to reflect on their models as a means to improve them. This article aims to show the results derived from developing a constructionist platform for embedded systems and wireless communications education, using a dedicated methodology based on the constructionist theory. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article describes how to develop and implement a tool that enables engineering students to acquire soft-skills taking advantage of the purely technical engineering educational tasks. Delphi Learning Package (DLP) tool is based on a Delphi strategic consulting method. Generally, this method is used to obtain long-term forecasts from knowledge of groups of experts. Some adjustments have been made to Delphi method in order to apply it to learning and acquiring soft-skills in engineering. For instance, this tool can be used to guide students toward obtaining key parameters for a technical matter or to find the best solutions to an intricate multiple-solution problem. Thus, students will have to use not only knowledge learned on the subject of engineering, but also knowledge resulting from handling-related documentation. By tackling a multiple-solution problem, students develop different soft skills such as critical thinking, synthesis ability, inference, and argumentation. In order to judge the value of this tool, two pilot projects have been developed involving fourth year students with a major in Telecommunications Engineering. This tool can be used freely by contacting the authors of this article. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this article, a vision-based control of a line-tracing mobile robot is presented. The position of the robot is determined based on the analysis of the images obtained by a ceiling mounted camera. Such an approach has some advantages compared to the more common robot mounted camera approach. The robot detection algorithm uses some well-known image processing algorithms. As the PC is common these days and the mobile robot is quite easy to build or buy, the only prerequisite is a camera. The time delay of a web camera is too large so a FireWire CCD camera is preferred for better performance. The control system presented can be an ideal educational tool for an introductory level course in image processing, image analysis, or machine vision. As the line-tracing problem is well known to everyone studying mechatronics or robotics, the approach presented in this article should be of great interest to all students in these fields, because it offers an alternative solution to the line-tracing problem. Besides that this approach makes it possible to implement a more advanced predictive control algorithm. In order to make the experiment even more interesting, an obstacle avoidance algorithm is presented as well. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

During the last three decades, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are being widely used in agricultural applications and specifically in irrigation management systems, where an intelligent use of the water is required. Taking this objective into account, an educational platform for the design of SCADA applications for irrigation programming combined with a scale model of a trickle irrigation system is described in this article. This platform facilitates the students of Agricultural Engineering to design and simulate different irrigation systems, providing an efficient and low cost tool. Moreover, as the SCADA applications are developed with the LabVIEW graphical programming language, complex mathematical models for irrigation, data sampling, and on-line programming by Internet are supported. The use of a data acquisition card for collecting data from transducers and for the activation of the actuators makes it possible to apply the implemented platform both to a real irrigation system and to the developed scale model, supplying the students with a more practical application of the learned concepts. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The article presents design and implementation of a mobile device based feedback system for lectures. The system permits participants to use mobile devices to post questions to the presenter's screen without interrupting the spoken flow of the presentation. Tests in conferences showed that the system increases the amount of feedback. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents the development of an education purpose toolbox for performance analysis of three-phase line start permanent magnet synchronous motors. The motor state-space equations are implemented in Simulink and an easy to use graphic user interface is designed. The starting performance of a typical motor is then simulated in different conditions as a case study. This toolbox provides a friendly and efficient environment for students to become familiar with the performance of this type of motor which is receiving increasing attention in the industry and academic. An experimental study is also carried out to validate the toolbox. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents a Matlab-based educational software developed at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, in order to familiarize students and young engineers with fundamental concepts of structural dynamics and, in particular, soil–structure interaction problems. This user-friendly educational tool aims to assist the students in comprehending the nature of this complex phenomenon and the role played by the physical parameters involved, while increasing their awareness of the potential impact of neglecting soil flexibility during seismic design of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings. This software is also used as a case study for teaching the development of civil engineering-oriented applications in Matlab within a course where all the relevant material is provided online. Two demonstration examples are comparatively assessed to illustrate the applicability of the software and justify the necessity of its implementation in class, while the integration of the software in the curriculum as well as students' feedback is also discussed. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article introduces a compiler construction practicum based on the implementation of a compiler for a small C-like language. The compiler has three phases, viz., lexical analysis, syntax analysis, and intermediate code generation. It uses some venerable principles of compiler construction like recursive descent parsing, syntax directed translation, and backpatching. The practicum is appropriate for pedagogical purposes because of its balanced design and the availability of an open source reference implementation of the compiler with a source code size of 2.2 KLOC only. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The philosophy of safety at work is one of the bases for the operation of electrical installations, with particular relevance in the manoeuvres in electrical substations. The curriculum for Electrical Engineering students should include such knowledge. This article presents an educational tool currently in use, which has demonstrated its full effectiveness in achieving the implementation of safe working methods in the planning and execution of manoeuvres in electrical substations. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The subtitle of this article could be “Modern engineer meets the masters of mathematical physics.” While there is no way to know how the masters would use our modern technology, we can educate ourselves in their way of thinking and adapt their mathematical methods to our computational capabilities. This article attempts to do just that and illustrates the findings with examples from dynamics, electro-magnetics, and quantum mechanics. It does this from the engineer's viewpoint and in keeping with the mission of the Computer Applications in Engineering Education publication. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In the design process for engineering structures, it is often of interest to determine the largest magnitude of a given form of load that can be applied on a structure before causing failure. This gives the factor of safety against failure. Determining the factor of safety entails analysis of a structure on the verge of failure, and is known as limit analysis. It is well known that limit analysis can be formulated as a constrained optimization problem. With robust computational tools for optimization having become readily available, it is possible to introduce the optimization-based approach to limit analysis at various stages in the undergraduate civil engineering curriculum. In this article, we present three instances of limit analysis using an optimization-based approach from (i) a sophomore level Statics course, (ii) a junior level Structural Analysis course, and (iii) a senior level Advanced Solid Mechanics course. These are based on materials presented by the author in undergraduate mechanics courses at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In each case, we develop a mathematical formulation and implement the computations in MATLAB. We use two optimization tools, one from the MATLAB Optimization Toolbox and the other called SeDuMi. Classroom experience has shown that the optimization-based approach helps students recognize the underlying thread in seemingly disparate limit analysis problems. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents a computer program that is used in a power system economics course in order to clarify the differences and the impact of eight transmission pricing and three tracing methodologies on transmission cost allocation. The software can graphically represent the allocation of transmission cost to network users. Thanks to its graphical user interface, the software is very friendly for the students. Moreover, this article presents an educational example that helps students understand all the calculations that are involved in transmission pricing. The software and the example-driven presentation have been proven very efficient in the education of students at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece. In conclusion, the work presented in this article advances the use of computer application in the education of transmission pricing. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Instructional tools for the computer-aided education of structural analysis have been implemented as an extension of a finite element analysis program, VisualFEA. They are devised to promote understanding in structural analysis, and stimulate interest in the subject by substantiating the conceptual principles and visually exhibiting the complex computational processes with the aid of interactive computer graphics. In lieu of manipulation with pre-supplied conditions or the input of assumed data, the instructional tools are operated through a real and practical process of structural analysis from the creation of modeling data to the presentation of solution results. The basic principles, computing formulae, and methods of analysis in structural mechanics are simulated for instructional purposes on the basis of finite element technology. VisualFEA has a number of educational functions for use in teaching and learning structural analysis. Among them, only those related to frame analysis are introduced in this article. There are numerous programs for frame analysis. However, the educational features described in this article are not common in any other programs for similar purposes. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents a new software tool for electronic instrumentation teaching. The software is concerned with the main concepts underlying instrumentation systems. It is based on Java applets and organized as a tutorial. It acts as a visual tool for interactive simulations. The tool covers, in a practical manner, all the stages of a basic electronic instrumentation system, the sensor, the signal conditioning, and the analog to digital conversion. It must be meant as a complement to classical teaching methodologies based on lectures, not as a substitute of such pedagogical strategies. The software helps students in learning principles of measurement systems, to improve the teaching–learning process in the discipline. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Learning content management systems (LCMSs) have become increasingly popular in the educational field over the past few years. However, problems in system design can create difficulties in the interactions between LCMSs and an important sector of the user population. The assessment and monitoring of LCMS accessibility are vital for the guarantee of universal accessibility in education. This article presents a comparative study of the accessibility of three web-based, open-source LCMSs: Moodle, ATutor, and Sakai. Results of the study indicate that barriers to accessibility are present in each of the three systems evaluated. A primary aim of the study is to help detect and correct these barriers such that the goal of universal access in educational environments may one day be achieved. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This research applies the techniques of collaborative annotating and data mining into formative assessments and further develops an annotation-sharing and intelligent formative assessment (ASIFA) system as an auxiliary Web learning tool. The collaborative annotating technique is based on collaborative annotations made by peers while the data mining technique is used to identify the learning bottlenecks suffered by most students on a formative assessment. The ASIFA system combines these two techniques, deemed as scaffolding learning, to furnish students with adequate annotations to clarify their confused concepts on formative assessments and to further improve their learning achievements on summative assessments. Finally, some experiments are conducted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system and investigate the effects of the students' behaviors of inputting and reviewing annotations on learning achievements. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Education in technological disciplines requires students to be always in contact with real systems, where they can apply their theoretical knowledge. These systems tend to be expensive and the high initial investment is returned after a long time, as the resource can only be used by a limited number of students during the on-site practical classes. The use of remote laboratories, which allow students to access the system through the Internet, optimizes resources by providing access to a larger number of users at any time. In this article, we present a remote laboratory of a quadruple-tank industrial scale model, with real industrial equipment. The students carry out control activities on the system through the Internet as they would do in a laboratory classroom. The remote laboratory architecture is based on a three layer (physical layer–server layer–client layer) whose middle layer consists of four servers: Web Server, Proxy Server, Database Server, and Control Server. In the Control server, a link application based on OPC (Ole for Process Control) standard to select different industrial controllers which are connected to the scale model simultaneously has been implemented. Since the application is based on a standard, this structure can be expanded easily with other industrial controllers from other manufacturers. The remote laboratory is used in automatic and control subjects from different Spanish universities. Surveys conducted among the students about the use of Laboratory show that they perceive an improvement of their learning using the lab. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

AEIOU is an integrated programming environment developed to support the teaching–learning process of object-oriented programming in a gradual way. AEIOU includes three modules, one for each level of students' expertise: novice, intermediate, and advanced. This article describes the features of each module of AEIOU and the experiences and results obtained using this programming environment to support the sequence of programming courses in two Mexican engineering schools. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Instructing multimedia practice is a fundamental issue in a computer science high-level course. However, for an effective instruction of this subject an experience with real case study can be considered as fundamental. To achieve this goal, in this research a project for the practical learning of multimedia application and development is presented. This consists of an on-line VR-based written test system for automotive driving license. This research breaks down an on-line VR-based written test system into several portions that are suited for teamwork. Building this system it is possible to understand the performance and limitations of different tools, for example, multimedia, database, programming, etc., and to create a collaborative learning environment. We conclude with a rough timeline for modeling an on-line written test system for automotive driving license during the course of a semester. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Electrical power quality (PQ) is a crucial competitive and developing factor to all economic activities. The economic impact resulting from a bad PQ would be drastic on all consumers. Computers, uninterruptible and switched power supplies (UPS), and fluorescent lamps/tubes are examples of nonlinear loads that have the consumption of a nonsinusoidal current, which cause disturbances in the power supply system (that may be severe or not). This study discusses residential generic power circuitry analysis and simulation, under nonlinear loads, in connection with undergraduate electrical engineering education. It briefly reviews some of the basic techniques, and presents a software tool that has been found to be very useful in the context. The tool has an easy-to-use, friendly interface, and can be used to teach design techniques or as a laboratory support to study the applicability of known methods to real situations. The students can perform simulations with their own data on Microsoft™ Windows®-based platforms. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article describes a modular approach to FPGA-based micro computer architecture design for supporting undergraduate courses in computer science and related discipline. We have adopted the modular approach to the second FPGA version of the BZK.SAU[6] named BZK.SAU.FPGA10.1. The BZK.SAU.FPGA10.1 platform has modular units that enable development of their own micro computer designs, particularly arithmetic and logic unit (ALU), memory and system bus, by integrating of simple building blocks. So the proposed modular approach will create high level interest in the faculty teaching computer organization and architecture course and produce significant contribution in the education of engineers. Also, such an approach could greatly increase the understanding of the architectural concept of the Microcomputer Architecture. All the modules in the BZK.SAU.FPGA10.1 design are entirely realized using schematic structure on Altera's Cyclone II Development board. So, students can implement on a hardware platform to test their own designs by downloading since it is an affordable cost for the institution. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

e-Learning is getting more important in education to provide new or enhanced services. Learning objects created according to e-learning standards such as Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) play a major role in order to produce quality contents for e-learning. A virtual learning environment (VLE) is normally used to support e-learning by providing online courses and other learning activities. Moodle is one of the most widely used VLEs. However, Moodle still does not support the SCORM 2004 Sequencing and Navigation. This article proposes a new technique to create an e-tutorial module, one of the main services in e-learning that supports a certain level of SCORM 2004 Sequencing and Navigation on Moodle version 1.9.2+. This helps to provide learning with more control on the learning sequences and hence supports remediation learning strategy. Besides, study shows that courses built with learning objects complying with the SCORM 2004 standards are interoperable. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The aim of a Virtual Lab project is to provide students access via the Internet to various experiments in those Universities where the infrastructure resources are poor. Moreover, a Virtual Lab is based on a distance education concept due to the fact that certain students may be interested in studying even at places which are far away from University eliminating the necessity to be there in person. However, methodologies used in the development of this kind of educational applications have too many problems: a lack of common theoretical frameworks which can be used by anyone in the project, and excessive formality in both technical and pedagogical factors. So, considering these factors, the introduction of “effective practices” within an alternative methodology to develop this kind of software is proposed. The applications of the Virtual Lab have been tested with the students enrolled at Technological University of the Mixtec Region and the initial educational results of the implementation of the DCLab software are presented. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article describes an efficient method of teaching lightning transient on power system, to undergraduate students of power system groups in electrical engineering departments, as a part of a high voltage course for senior undergraduate students. The article shows how to simulate the components of power system in order to teach students the basics of lightning transient phenomena, and to practice the simulation of power system components. In the first part of the article the simulation of component is described, and in the second part a system is simulated for lightning transient study. Evaluation of the simulation over several semesters with more than 48 students is very positive in terms of their developing confidence in and understanding of lightning transient phenomena. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The particle swarm optimization (PSO), one of the most successful natural inspired algorithms, is revisited in the context of a proposal for a new teaching experiment. The problem considered is the open-loop step identification procedure, which is studied as an optimization problem. The PSO canonical algorithm main issues addressed within the proposed open-loop step identification experience are: the swarm random initialization methodology, the population size variation, and the inertia weight selection. The teaching experience learning outcomes are stated, simulation results presented, and feedback results from students analyzed. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

An evolutionary process that is currently taking place in the software industry is the shift from developing applications from scratch to discovering and assembling services published in the Internet. This has given birth to a new computing paradigm called service-oriented computing (SOC). We investigated whether simplifying and automating tasks inherent to SOC-based development, while exploiting systems engineering students' experience in earlier paradigms, namely object orientation, reduce the cognitive effort needed to learn SOC. The study involved 38 undergraduate students plus 7 postgraduate students from 4 universities, which attended a course about SOC development models and technologies. Then, they were asked to develop a real-life service-oriented application using two alternatives, namely existing SOC libraries and a software support of our own named EasySOC. EasySOC promotes using common object-oriented design patterns to structure service-oriented applications, facilitates service discovery, and hides many technological details from users. The students were surveyed about their perception on both alternatives using a Likert-based questionnaire. Results show that the students, who had no previous experience in service-oriented notions before the experiment, perceived that EasySOC allows focusing on essential aspects of the paradigm while concealing accidental aspects, and provides adequate support and guidance to bridge the gap. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Medical imaging is one of the major fields in the multi-disciplinary curriculum of biomedical engineering (BME). Biomedical engineers from different backgrounds need to understand biology in order to be able to develop effective equipment to improve healthcare diagnosis through medical images. Visualization tools are important in the learning process to improve biomedical engineer's understanding of medical imagery. In this work, we design a web-based 3D medical image visualization framework that can be used to improve medical image understanding in biology and anatomy. Our proposed framework provides not only 3D visualization, but also 3D reconstruction for medical images. This paper describes the design framework and the technology integration, as well as the implementation details. The developed system has been used as an educational tool prototype in a BME department. In order to evaluate the tool's usability, we tested it with BME students as well as doctors. We compared a conventional 2D visualization application and our proposed method with regard to system efficiency and user satisfaction. The 3D system generally demonstrated better performance and a higher level of satisfaction. The students were able to use our 3D tool to study 2D images effectively without prior background knowledge in anatomy. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The procedure introduced, based on a mathematical approach, provides a systematic way of finding the sequencing of reactors in series providing the minimum total reactor volume. Using the proposed procedure along with Levenspiel graphical method provides both a systematic way of solving the sequencing problem and a visual interpretation of the results. Trial and error calculations are needed with standard methods to obtain conversions in cases reactor volumes are given. A method is available in the literature to determine the conversions in continuous stirred tank reactors (CSTRs) in series, given the CSTRs volumes. The direct method proposed eliminates the need for initial guesses and trial and error calculations for both PFRs and CSTRs, using newly defined plots. Detailed spreadsheet calculations are provided to illustrate the direct procedure for calculating conversions, given the reactors volumes in a sequence, whether the sequencing is optimum or not. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This paper introduces a new tool to approach the effects of a diffraction grating and its interaction with other optical and electronic components in a light wavelength analysis system. The model's theoretical background is described. This model is intended for educational purposes and it is referred to a miniaturized spectrophotometer. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Civil Engineering Department at George Mason University offered a structural design course that combines reinforced concrete and structural steel prior to Fall 2009. With recent re-designing of course offerings, the course is split into two separate design courses: reinforced concrete design and structural steel design. The new teaching format allows instructors to incorporate additional instruction methods in design classes that supplement traditional teaching. This article discusses the development and implementation of computational MATLAB design modules that are incorporated in the first and second offering of the new reinforced concrete design course. The main objective of the modules is to improve students' computational skills for solving routine design calculations without compromising the theoretical understanding of the subject matter. The graphical user interface driven modules are designed to include program descriptions, user-friendly field inputs, and a detailed results summary with step-by-step design verifications. A classroom survey was conducted on the use of the design modules and results of the survey are presented. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In engineering education, it is very important to provide solid knowledge and practice to students in order to deal with architectures, mechanisms, and algorithms for the control of processes. In this article we will present the concept, detailed technical requirements, description, implementation, and verification of a process (thermal) trainer. In addition three possible educational tasks will be presented with a developed software infrastructure for the remote control of a laboratory set-up via the Internet. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Simulations help students to deal with complex real problems, therefore engineering instructors include these software packages in their teaching methodologies. To achieve a learning aim, different programs can be chosen. Which is the adequate choice? Based on educational criteria, we implement a well-known selection method, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), to find a satisfactory solution. An example portrays the selection tool performance in the thermal engineering field. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Since operation of virtual winder can relieve the problem of lack of experiment on real equipments, virtual winder can be valuable complements to physical winder operation experiment. Virtools is the most widely used software for creating 3D VR environment. In this article, using Virtools to construct a virtual winder is demonstrated in detail by dividing the whole process into five steps: (1) creates 3D winder models in 3ds Max; (2) exports the models to Virtools format using Expert plugins (3ds Max Exporter); (3) designs scenes including cameras and lighters; (4) constructs the virtual winder including Behavior Building Block (BB), Scripts, and Virtools Scripting Language (VSL); (5) synthesizes and exports interactive coursewares of the virtual winder. The considerations and discussions in this article may be useful for building system of virtual education equipment in other subject areas. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents an interactive Java software platform which enables any user to easily create advanced virtual laboratories (VLs) for Robotics. This novel tool provides both support for developing applications with full 3D interactive graphical interface and a complete functional framework for modelling and simulation of arbitrary serial-link manipulators. In addition, its software architecture contains a high number of functionalities included as high-level tools, with the advantage of allowing any user to easily develop complex interactive robotic simulations with a minimum of programming. In order to show the features of the platform, the article describes, step-by-step, the implementation methodology of a complete VL for Robotics education using the presented approach. Finally, some educational results about the experience of implementing this approach are reported. Comput Appl Eng Educ  © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The development, implementation and evaluation of a suitable curriculum for students to use computational fluid dynamics as part of a fluid mechanics course at intermediate undergraduate level are described. Evaluation of successful learning outcomes is made to confirm the effectiveness of the interface as a suitable educational tool for students at intermediate undergraduate level. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

We provide a set of projects to put in practice artificial intelligence techniques using LEGO Mindstorms in an undergraduate computer degree, covering reactive and deliberative agents, rule-based systems, graph search algorithms, and planning methods. The projects have been applied for teaching in a third-year undergraduate subject of a computer engineering degree at the University of Granada (Spain). After the contextualization and development of the projects, we discuss the results, advantages, and drawbacks of our experience. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Undergraduate engineering laboratories have been reported to be inefficient. Educators have been aware of this problem and have urged their students to prepare in different ways, such as by self-reparation, handing in a pre-laboratory assignment, or attending a pre-laboratory preparation session. Many studies report different approaches to laboratory preparation; however comparative investigations are scarce. This article reports on an empirical study that spanned over 3 years. Three preparation modes (PMs) are compared: (a) PM1—pre-laboratory home assignment with the laboratory manual and virtual laboratory software; (b) PM2—pre-laboratory session with a teaching assistant and preparation via the laboratory manual only; and (c) PM3—pre-laboratory session with a teaching assistant and preparation via the virtual laboratory and the laboratory manual. Measurements of the laboratory learning outcomes by means of pre- and post-laboratory tests and a comprehensive laboratory report indicate that PM3 is the most efficient approach. Discussions of the result in light of pedagogical and cognitive science theories are provided. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Audio processors allow to implement laboratory activities specially on acoustics. We have evaluated three audio processors (Audacity, WaveLab, and Adobe Audition). Although an overall grade was also calculated as a guideline (not a statement of “the best”), the decision about the most suitable one depends on each particular laboratory activity. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents a new E-learning platform called Personal Learning Environment Box (PLEBOX). The system is built on Microsoft SharePoint and SharePoint Learning Kit (SLK) and enables the creation of modular and expansible software, presenting a simplified interaction with the user. PLEBOX has been used by 210 users (10 teachers and 200 engineering students) of the University of Beira Interior, Portugal and the University of Valladolid, Spain. The PLEBOX platform has innovative features compared to existing platforms, such as creating a customizable work environment, the ability to add applications, a framework for developing modules, and a new form to exposure learning contents, which can be used in engineering applications and education. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The use of schematic diagrams is very common in many subjects of engineering education because it unequivocally permits establishing the dependency relationships among the different elements of the circuit. This article presents an interactive software that helps students to study and design them by means of CAD tools and a self-correction module. Results obtained with its evaluation within university studies can positively assess the integration of the application into teaching methodologies related to the design and drawing of schematic diagrams. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Distance learning and e-learning are popular and widely used technology in today's teaching environment; monitoring systems allow teachers to assess the learning state of their students. This study proposes a development of activity generation and behavior observation systems that allows teachers to assess the learning activities of their students. We use the concept of deterministic finite automaton to define learning activities. In the proposed system, teachers only need to click the drop-down list items to manage learning activities. The proposed system also generates an activity recognizer after defining the activity. The activity recognizer can parse student-learning logs allowing teachers to get the real-time learning activities of students. When students are in abnormal learning states, teachers can immediately provide them with active guidance. The experiments in this study demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed system. Experimental results show that students received higher grades and exhibited less abnormal learning with the proposed monitoring system. These results demonstrate that the proposed system provides teachers with a convenient interface for assisting their students. The proposed monitoring system improves the learning outcomes of students. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Consider binary and ternary mixtures of aromatic compounds composed of benzene/toluene and benzene/toluene/p-xylene, respectively. The present study shows how one can apply both mass and energy balance equations in order to understand the separation of such ideal mixtures by distillation. An adiabatic flash distillation problem is solved graphically for a mixture composed of benzene/toluene. Rigorous resolution of a steady-state binary distillation problem, using Mathematica® and the same benzene/toluene mixture, shows perfect agreement with results obtained using HYSYS. Results of a dynamic simulation involving the solution of a relatively large system of differential algebraic equations are presented and discussed for the benzene/toluene mixture. SIMULINK© and Mathematica® are used to perform control of this binary distillation column. Finally, a steady-state simulation of a simple multicomponent mixture, composed of benzene/toluene/p-xylene, is studied and some qualitative results are drawn from both the temperature and composition profiles. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Educational software for the kinematic analysis of planar and spatial mechanisms is presented in this article. This general-purpose kinematic software has been developed as a complement to Machine Theory lectures. The different modules integrated in the software compute and analyse various kinematic entities, which enable an advanced student to investigate the characteristics of a mechanism. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article describes a LabVIEW-based implementation of remote control of laboratory equipment for basic Electronics courses. Remote control of laboratory equipment is demonstrated on an example of recording the amplitude characteristics of a T-notch filter. Overview of traditional, virtual, and remote laboratory features is given, too. Real laboratory setup is presented, including hardware and software components and virtual instruments, as well as solutions for remote laboratory access. Finally, the way of putting the laboratory online and the course of the experiment are shown. Comput Appl Eng Educ. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This paper presents a laboratory experiment for teaching Automation. The objective of this project is to allow the students of the Technical Engineering Schools of the University of La Laguna (Spain) to learn the theoretical and practical fundamentals of Automation Systems through a laboratory experiment based on a home automation application. Automation plays an increasingly important role in the centred of Engineering; as a result, several subjects in the curriculum plan at the Engineering School focus on this discipline. In recent years, our teaching efforts have been centred on designing appealing and modern laboratory experiments. With these practical experiments, students acquire a basic knowledge of Automation, along with complementary knowledge of the latest developments in the field. The laboratory session presented in this article draws its inspiration from the Smart Home, a recent field in applied Automation. Due to the impossibility of carrying out the control of a smart installation in a real house, a simulation experiment was designed for educational tasks. A scale model of a house was built, and all the sensors, the actuators and the control system were adapted to this scale model. A Programmable Logic Controller was selected as the control system. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents laboratory exercises and project assignments developed to teach concepts of concurrent and distributed programming in Java. The exercises and assignments cover important topics determined after an analysis of topics that are often taught in different universities. During the exercises, students reengineer the general purpose discrete event simulator named SLEEP (Simulation, Logic, Execution, prEsentation, Physics). A multilayer organization of the SLEEP simulator enables coverage of the important topics in a coherent manner. In order to support parallel execution in SLEEP students start to reengineer the simulator layers with an exercise related to concurrent programming, followed by two exercises related to distributed programming, and finish with an exercise related to grid computing. The exercises follow the principles of error management training and teach students what common errors are and how to overcome them. The article also describes a practical experience with the use of SLEEP on a concurrent and distributed programming course over a 3-year period. The results show a positive impact on both students' satisfaction and performance. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents an approach to integration and evaluation of software change request (SCR) specification services in an educational environment. The educational environment, a virtual network laboratory, VNLab, and its extension with services for specifying SCRs, are described. There are three services for SCR specification implemented in the described environment. These services are: paper form service, Web form service, and service integrated within the context of running application. The last service is based on developed software utility called SCRSpecifier (Software Change Request Specifier). After the services' description, the results of a conducted experiment are presented. The main goal of the experiment was to discover possible advantages and disadvantages of described SCR services and to compare them. The analyses of the data, collected during the experiment, provided the evidence that implemented services are useful to students and personnel responsible for maintenance of described educational environment. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Automatic control is present in most industrial applications and engineering. The automatic control practice with the physical implementation of the controller is a major issue to be covered in undergraduate/graduate engineering course, and those issues dealing with subjects such as automation, control, electromechanics, mechatronics, manufacturing, and robotics which should be included in their curricula. The contribution of this work is the development of an open core of a three-time controller under FPGA technology applied in a standard control course, allowing students to have a real-time control implementation with technological independence and high level of integration. The combination of both, theory and practice is important. Thus, this course's proposal develops the theoretical bases in practical form. The opportunity to control a servomotor demands students with area proficiency, which is reflected in a project development. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Role Assignment Methodology for Software Engineering Teams (RAMSET) methodology relates personality, abilities, and software roles for building Software Engineering Teams, applying sociometric, and psychometric techniques. This paper presents the results and experience of applying RAMSET's software supporting tool developed under a fuzzy approach. This software facilitates the role assignment decision making process, which results in a choice of role selection for individuals in working team projects. It has been applied in Software Engineering Courses of our Computer Engineering Program with great success giving students a practical experience in learning objectives, functions, responsibilities, and tasks of a member in a specific role during the Software Engineering Process. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The most important feature of the intelligent tutoring systems (ITS), one of the most popular study topics of recent years, is that it provides an opportunity for individual learning by taking students' individual differences into account. In order to be able to realize this feature, it is necessary that the system recognizes students well. The process of recognizing student is performed as a result of observations which ITS applies on students. A number of uncertainties arise during these observations. In order to minimize learning uncertainties and create a productive and effective ITS, type-2 fuzzy logic, one of the artificial intelligence techniques, is used in the system developed in this study. In order to show the effectiveness of the developed web-based ITS, it is applied to the teaching of a basic Control Course. The educational evaluation of the system is presented in the paper. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A novel multifaceted elective course in Biological Engineering is described, along with the experience in its instruction and development over 14 years. The course introduces modeling and simulation to solve biological/biomedical problems to students with a background in transport processes but with no prior experience in modeling. The critical elements needed to introduce such modeling to less experienced students are discussed, such as simplifying a problem for problem formulation, case studies that build a clear bridge to their preparation in fundamentals, and extracting important details from a simulation. The question of a black box versus a white box approach to presenting simulations is addressed. Active learning practices such as think-pair-share and distributed learning are introduced as enablers for this course. Student motivation has been increased by making the course student-centered with the students themselves selecting and executing the modeling projects. The authors describe how the same course can serve many purposes in a curriculum, including the introduction of a state-of-the-art design tool, extending fundamental knowledge to solve realistic problems, enhancing the fundamentals, introducing teamwork, written and oral communication, and design concepts. Although we have discussed the course in the context of biological/biomedical engineering, it can also be extended to other engineering curricula such as Mechanical and Chemical Engineering. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The analysis of activities in CSCL (Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning) environments can provide us with some interesting conclusions about collaborative learning processes themselves. Specifically, such an analysis can show the effectiveness of such processes and allow for the definition of intervention mechanisms which can motivate and engage the students in the learning activities. Until now, this analysis has focused on the collaboration process and the resulting product separately. We hypothesize that the use of Artificial Intelligence techniques can be useful for the production of a rule-based system that considers both the process and the product. Of the existing techniques, we propose the use of Genetic Classifier Systems (GCS) for their ability to evolve and adapt. The use of these rules allows for the identification and characterization of learning situations, in addition to the generation of feedback that can guide the students and the group towards a more effective learning experience. At the same time, the rule system can adapt to the new learning activities. The analysis method proposed in this article focuses on CSCL environments in which the collaboration takes the form of a conversation. We also present a tool that implements this approach and the results of its application to some learning activities, using an environment for collaborative learning of design. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Induction motors are critical components for industry and they can present multiple-combined faults. Thus, there is a necessity of closely monitoring the motor condition. A computer-aided tool is developed to analyze current/vibration signals during the startup transient/steady state, helping students to improve their understanding and learning on induction motor monitoring. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this work, we present Visual Wavelet-Lab, a software application that offers object-oriented library and a graphical user interface (GUI) to learn and apply wavelet transforms to one- and two-dimensional signals. The solution described is based on encapsulating and reusing the proprietary environment Matlab and the corresponding Wavelet Toolbox. This will allow for developing custom user applications, with well-defined and specific characteristics, aimed at learning the wavelet transform and applications. Since functionality is reused, and therefore it has not to be implemented, we gain the possibility to build in powerful and ad hoc tools for teaching and investigating, in a short term and at low costs. The application developed was presented to several users and evaluated in terms of usability. The results obtained are encouraging and indicate that using Visual Wavelet-Lab can be a useful tool for educational purposes. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this study, a new toolbox that can be used for the education of bio-inspired methods for optimization of mathematical functions is presented. The main idea of this work is to offer user-friendly software to students of bio-inspired optimization methods. The new toolbox can be used to optimize benchmark mathematical functions in evolutionary computation, and can also be used in the research of new bio-inspired optimization methods. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A software tool for interval type-2 fuzzy logic is presented in this article. The software tool includes a graphical user interface for construction, edition, and observation of the fuzzy systems. The Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Logic System Toolbox (IT2FLS) has a user-friendly environment for interval type-2 fuzzy logic inference system development. Tools that cover the different phases of the fuzzy system design process, from the initial description phase, to the final implementation phase, are presented as part of the Toolbox. The Toolbox's best properties are the capacity to develop complex systems and the flexibility that permits the user to extend the availability of functions for working with type-2 fuzzy operators, linguistic variables, interval type-2 membership functions, defuzzification methods, and the evaluation of interval type-2 fuzzy inference systems. The toolbox can be used for educational and research purposes. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article presents a new tool that can be used to improve the teaching methods of smart home systems development. The main contribution of this tool is that it allows stakeholders to develop home automation (HA) systems using platform-independent graphical elements. Teachers can use this tool to introduce the development of smart home applications and to demonstrate concepts and theories pertaining to this domain. In addition, students can use the tool as an autonomous-learning environment. From the students' point of view, the development of a new system starts with the use of a smart home-specific graphical language, instead of using platform-dependent tools. The article is not only concerned with the description of the tool but also with the methodology to be followed by teachers and students. An example of use is also included illustrating the usefulness of the tool in engineering education. In order to evaluate the benefits of the approach, we conducted a survey amongst students who used the tool. The analysis of the outcome of this survey shows the chance to enable the development of HA applications with improved usability quality factors. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This article introduces a novel extension for Moodle supporting the automatic verification of codes written in Matlab. It has been applied when teaching the basics of imperative programming in a course aimed at chemical engineering students. The extension derives from the module CTPracticals, originally developed by the authors to enable the automatic assessment of VHDL assignments in Moodle. Several major changes have been made, mainly in the automatic verification engine, in the core of the system, and in several user interfaces. The module partially frees teachers from the repetitive task of verifying assignments, allowing them to invest more time assisting students and tackling new pedagogical objectives. An anonymous student survey proved that students are satisfied with the system because they find the feedback and the constantly updated view of the status of their assignments helpful. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Latest developments in economy and industry have shed light on the growing importance of flexible and practice-oriented skills of industrial employees. Much improvement can be achieved by adapting the current practices of education accordingly, for example, by emphasizing hands-on experience and preparing learners (both students and employees in extended training) for independent life-long learning strategies. The paper highlights the importance of open-source software in this context. After giving an overview of R&D projects delivering open-source solutions and existing open-source communities, the example of the TraSer project (an open-source solution platform for track-and-trace applications) is closely examined, with special emphasis on its potential role in education at universities and industrial companies. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this study, the score equivalence of computer-based assessment (CBA) and paper-and-pencil testing (PPT) in an undergraduate course of introductory computer programing at the National Technical University of Athens' School of Chemical Engineering, was examined. The research was carried out with 211 students participating, and was realized by a specially constructed CBA platform as well as the classical PPT. Both types of assessment included the same questions of multiple-choice type, completing and correcting code in Fortran, as well as writing Fortran code from scratch. The results showed that, in general, students performed better and received higher scores under CBA compared to PPT. In particular, the very good students benefited from the advantages that the computer compiler offers in debugging code and completing code exercises and, thus, received relatively higher scores in these parts of the test. Moreover, switching answers and devoting more time-on-task was found to be beneficial for the students' performance. Overall, the findings of this study revealed that the actual programing abilities of the students are better evaluated using such CBA tests. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20512

Electrical analogy, which is used to solve numerical problems in fluid mechanics, is used here to solve the classical problem of Couette flow between two parallel plates, Hagen–Poiseuille flow in a pipe and the transient free convection flow along a semi-infinite vertical wall. The nonlinear system of partial differential equations is numerically solved by the Network Simulation Method, based on thermo-electric analogy. A simulator of electrical devices, permits the direct visualization of the local and/or integrated transport variables (temperatures, velocities, concentrations, and fluxes) at any point or section of the medium. At the same time, the solution for both transient and steady-state problems is obtained, the only requirement being finite-difference schemes for the spatial variable. This educational tool is seen to be very useful for solving numerical problems in engineering and can be used to graduate in the University. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20516

In this paper, we present the students' evaluation procedure at the UNED (Spanish Distance Education University). At UNED, students are free to choose the location and the date they take their exams. However, this approach requires that teachers define and develop several exams for every single subject. To ease this task, in this paper we present Autotest, a tool that generates exams in an automatic way. We instantiate this tool for a subject being taught by the authors, Complexity and Computability taught in the third year of the Computer Science studies at UNED.© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20508

Computer-aided design or simulation courses are usually focused on the use of a single CAD–CAE package, chosen according to specific criteria or final application. However, on the “Expert in CAD–CAE Technologies” course, taught annually at the Machine Engineering Division of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, we have chosen a multidisciplinary approach based on the use of three different CAD–CAE software packages, as the following paragraph will describe. This work details the results of a comparison between the CAD–CAE programs taught on that course (NX-6, Catia v.5 r.17 and Solid Edge v.20). The work has been conducted taking into account the opinions of students and teachers on important technical and practical aspects concerning the different design, simulation and calculation modules. With this comparison, it is hoped to attain a progressive increase in teaching quality by bearing in mind students' satisfaction with their own learning as a relevant factor, in accordance with the guidelines set by the Bologna Declaration regarding the implementation of the European Higher Education Area and the new quality assessment trends in teaching. Studies similar to this one may be highly useful when assessing whether the use of different software will be sufficient, as well as in situations where a choice needs to be made from among several programs in order to promote some particularly important aspect or activity. The opinions of teachers as well as students are important, particularly when students are seeking a job in Industry, as it is possible to take some urgent and very necessary steps that will meet the requirements demanded in job interviews. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20509

In fluid mechanics courses of engineering curricula, theoretical performance curves of hydraulic turbines are obtained by means of simple analytical expressions that tend to overestimate experimental data. As we show here in the analysis of a laboratory-scale Pelton wheel, a much deeper physical insight can be achieved by means of general-purpose commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software programs, becoming a suitable tool for academic activities. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20513

User models are essential to e-learning systems, giving students learning continuity, tutors evidence of students' progress, and both a way to personalize students' learning materials to their abilities and preferences. Personalizing information has long been the motivation behind developing e-learning systems. Adaptive educational systems attempt to maintain a learning style profile for each student and use this profile to adapt the presentation and navigation of instructional content to each student. This kind of system adapts the learning process on the basis of the student's learning preferences, knowledge, and availability. One such Web-based tool is built at the Business School of Professional Studies in Blace (the system of intelligent evaluation using tests), which infers student knowledge using adaptive testing. The knowledge is not evaluated according to fixed standards, but it depends on individual characteristics of each student, therefore, the learning style which is the most suitable. This system is part of the integrated assessment system inside of integrated curriculum. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20510

In distance education and training, tutors play a fundamental role as they act as a facilitator of the learning process, particularly through their evaluation of the progress made. In this paper, we provide an overview of tutoring in e-learning contexts and describe the main functions that should be assumed by a tutor. We then analyze all activities performed by tutors and establish conceptual models based on the Unified Modeling Language. The models promote an in-depth analysis and a detailed description of the functions needed to tutor on-line courses. These models may not only be used as guidelines for tutors but also as a general schema to assess their work. Evaluation and validation of these models have been accomplished by a questionnaire that has been designed and distributed to learners in the framework of a tutored e-learning experiment. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20511

General computational software systems (such as Mathcad, Matlab, Techplot, LabView, Fluent, EES (Engineering Equation Solver), and Mathematica) with great flexibility are available for use on personal computers. This paper examines the application of one of these systems, EES, to a number of preliminary thermal sciences calculations, being a generalized EES. This software is a powerful equation solver with built-in functions and property tables for thermodynamics and transport properties as well as automatic unit checking capability. Application examples include close system of mix adiabatic of ideals gases and simple and generalized counter-flow cooling tower system. This program has demonstrated to be a useful tool that offers great flexibility and generality as well as congruence with problem formulation. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20514

Students will do almost anything to avoid using thermal-property tables. In this paper, Matlab-based thermal-property software is described as an enticement for students to do computer programming in the design of thermal systems. Downloaded shareware was used for steam properties in a steam-cycle project, and an air-property package was developed for use with a gas-turbine project. Although the use of computer programming required considerable effort by both instructor and students, most students did gain a better appreciation of the utility of writing computer programs as part of engineering design. Student evaluations of the course were not significantly affected compared to semesters in which computer programming was not encouraged. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20515

Inexpensive and flexible process control kits were developed that allow students to design, implement, and test control systems in the classroom. Students can construct a variety of flow processes using  in. tubing with “instant” connectors that allow process components to be snapped together quickly. The kits include a submersible pump, two tanks of different diameter, a static mixer, a relay switch box, and a control valve plus a variety of tubing, fittings, supports, and sensors. At the heart of the control system is the LEGO® NXT brick running RoboLAB software. This brick acts as an inexpensive A/D system that grabs student interest. The control system is then implemented on a PC using LabVIEW software. These hardware and software components allow students to conduct a variety of level, flow, and temperature control experiments. The software includes selection for active or passive sensors, linear calibration, and square root extraction allowing it to be easily adapted to a range of other LEGO sensors and systems. These kits have been used for both regular class experiments and for student open-ended projects. Kits were evaluated based on an anonymous student survey, instructors' observations of student activities, and student performance. Student response to the Lego kit has been positive and instructors observed a high level of student engagement when using the kits. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20495

Laboratory education is a core part of engineering curricula; engineering students generally prefer to work on something real. The classical mode and the oldest form of laboratory education is the hands-on mode. Advances in information and communication technologies have contributed to the laboratory education by creating two new modes, the simulated (virtual) mode and the online controlled mode (remote). Recently, developments or utilizations of hybrid structures of two types (e.g., virtual and hands-on, or remote and hands-on) have been reported in the literature; however, until now there are no reports of hybrid structures of the three types together. This paper describes the technical development of a novel laboratory model that combines the three modes in one unifying software package, namely the TriLab, by using Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench (LabVIEW). It is shown that LabVIEW provides a single programming environment for developing all components of the TriLab. Furthermore, it is shown that the Joomla web content management system can be used as a solution for efficient deployment of a remote lab online portal on the top of the LabVIEW core software. The development of the TriLab using LabVIEW and Joomla for an Instrumentation and Control Engineering Laboratory rig is shown. The analysis of student survey is presented which has shown positive impact of the pedagogical utilization of the TriLab. This is the first paper which aims to provide engineering academics a generic architecture and software solutions to rapidly develop their own TriLab. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20506

The rapid freezing of food is an important challenge faced by the frozen food industry, and investigations into more rapid and energy efficient ways of freezing foods are regularly carried out. Novel freezing technologies are not generally looked at by undergraduate engineers, as the techniques involved often require expensive or tightly regulated pilot equipment and may also involve complex underlying phenomena. However, computer-aided studies can be used to put students in touch with the real engineering of novel freezing technology, and can add to their analysis and design skills by allowing them to study phenomena that may not have otherwise understood. In this paper, a one-dimensional finite difference simulation procedure describing a novel freezing process, known as high-pressure freezing, is presented. The freezing simulations are represented by an explicit enthalpy formulation, and agree well with experimental data. VBA was used during code development, and served as an attractive way to introduce engineering students to the analysis of novel freezing technology. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20498

Simulation of alpha, beta and gamma radiation detection and measurement experiments which are part of nuclear physics laboratory courses was realized with Monte-Carlo method and JAVA Programming Language. As it is well known, establishing this type of laboratory is very expensive. At the same time, highly radioactive sources used in some experiments carry risks for students and also for experimentalists. By taking into consideration these problems, the aim of this study is to setup a virtual radiation laboratory with minimum cost and to speed up the training in radiation physics for students. Bearing in mind the training capabilities of the software is coded to allow the users creating their own experimental setup and searching for experimental setup suitable for a specific type of experiment. As an example, mixed source isotope identification with high purity germanium, bismuth germanate, and sodium iodine detectors is studied in this paper and the importance of energy resolution of a detector in such an experiment is discussed. Software shows the nature of radiation and radiation transport with the help of Monte-Carlo method. In this software, experimental parameters can be changed manually by the user and experimental results can be followed in an multi channel analyzer (MCA) or an single channel analyzer (SCA). Results obtained in experiments can be analyzed by these MCA or SCA panels. Virtual radiation laboratory which is developed in this study with reliable results and unlimited experimentation capability seems a useful educational tool. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20500

The state-variable formulation is the most widely used approach for the transient analysis of dynamic circuits. This paper illustrates the use of the Matlab environment to obtain the state-variable equations of LTI circuits for educational purposes. The system of equations is obtained by systematically formulating and rearranging the cut-set equations associated with the so-called proper tree. The setup developed in this paper is intended for a basic course on Linear Circuit Theory, which is mandatory in any Electrical Engineering curriculum, but it could be adapted to any other Engineering course involving first-order differential equations. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20507

Traditional computer networking courses are primarily based on lectures and include a few TCP/IP network socket programming assignments. Students may not know how to apply what they have learned in the classroom to solve real-world problems. This paper presents several interesting laboratory experiments to provide students with hands-on experiences in low-cost small office/home office (SOHO) networking technologies, including SOHO Router/Firewall, Wi-Fi Wireless LAN, HomePlug Powerline Communication, and HomePNA Phoneline Networking. The feedback from students is encouraging. The result of the assessment tests also shows that the hands-on projects have had a positive impact on student learning and comprehension. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20503

Operating systems (OS) is an important and mandatory discipline in many Computer Science, Information Systems, and Computer Engineering curricula. Some of its topics require a careful and detailed explanation from the instructor as they often involve theoretical concepts and somewhat complex mechanisms, demanding a certain degree of abstraction from the students if they are to gain a full understanding. The aim of this study was to design and evaluate the software tool Alg_OS. This software tool was designed to serve the learning purposes of the memory management and especially the page replacement algorithms operation to be used in the everyday OS classrooms. The undergraduate students can easily explore the operations of those algorithms through an interaction with Alg_OS user interface. More specifically, students can develop the operation way for each algorithm separately and learn from their mistakes that the software shows automatically in real time. All students performances stored in a database of Alg_OS. A total of 111 final-year undergraduate university students of the Department of Applied Informatics in Management and Economy, Technological Educational Institution of Messolonghi, Messolonghi, Greece were surveyed about their intention to use “Alg_OS” in their learning. The results showed that students had positive values indicating a tendency to be favorable towards using Alg_OS in their learning. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20502

A real-time aircraft radar simulation applied in naval training is presented. The implemented algorithm works on a 3D synthesized environment, described by large sets of polygons—a typical scene can have a million of triangles—and the lobe is discretized with a cluster of rays. The radar display is recreated solving fast ray–polygon intersections (a variation of Ray-Shooting), and mapping them on the screen. This work proposes a new polygonal simplification method and a geometric classification algorithm in order to solve the intersections efficiently. This methodology leads to high fidelity images and real-time radar simulation, which operates at the specified 15 revolutions per minute rate. The results were tested with trained aircraft pilots.© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20505

We introduce testbed-assisted learning as an effective means for teaching digital communications. Laboratory teaching activities of digital communications courses benefit very much from utilizing a hardware testbed, since it greatly facilitates the understanding of very important effects introduced by real-world transceivers. We overcome the main drawback of communications hardware, that is, the cumbersome low-level programming interfaces provided by hardware manufacturers, by introducing a distributed multilayer software architecture. This architecture provides different abstraction levels to access hardware testbeds, releasing students from the low-level interaction with the hardware. Also, the distributed nature of this architecture results in a high flexibility of operation. This way, students can focus on learning communications topics without devoting any time to low-level programming, that is usually out of the scope of digital communications courses. Thanks to testbed-assisted learning, they are able to perform illustrative experiments to understand digital communications concepts (e.g., source coding, modulation, space-time coding, etc.) and to test algorithms without developing a new program from scratch, speeding up both the implementation and the debugging tasks. However, those students interested in hardware implementations can use the software architecture to access and interact with lower programming levels until they are as close as possible to the hardware. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20499

This article presents a simple thermal model for transient analysis of high-voltage underground power cables based on proper ladder diagram at MATLAB–Simulink software under various operating conditions for engineering students. Available commercial programs created with commercial worries are not suitable for students during the learning process, which involve different applications on power cable analysis. The model gives an opportunity for students to solve the often-faced transient problems in utilities. The transient model of the underground power cable system using the analytic procedures based on IEC60853 standards is presented with an example solution of the 154 kV power cable in service in Turkish transmission system in this article. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20497

The current grading systems for computer programming assignments have taken correctness, efficiency, complexity, and maintainability into account. Of these four components, the most important measurement is the correctness. However, the existing grading systems still have some drawbacks. It is hard to measure college students' overall programming skills based only on their answers to a single form of programming questions. The author proposes a new approach by presenting multiple forms of computer programming questions, such as statement filling-in, program modifying and algorithm designing, and by providing an automated grading algorithm to measure the correctness, time efficiency, space efficiency, complexity, and robustness. This proposed automated grading method has been employed successfully in the development of C programming and Delphi programming exam systems for Computer Application Ability Exam for College Students in Fujian. It has also been applied to the development of an online programming self-testing system for Data Structure course which is offered by Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Matrix converters are becoming an actual alternative for many AC–AC power conversion applications. This paper shows that it is possible to use the six-phase matrix converter to increase the maximum voltage gain. A complete diagram of simulation is presented. At last, evaluation of the study over students is showed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20496

This paper introduces a compiler technology based approach to model and simulate finite automata for pedagogical purposes. The compiler technology helps to define a language to formally model finite automata and to develop a toolkit to simulate them efficiently. The language is called Finite Automaton Description Language (FADL) and the toolkit is based on it. A fast single-pass compiler is used to compile a finite automaton defined in FADL. Then an interpreter is used to simulate the working of the compiled finite automaton for any input string. The nondeterminism of a Nondeterministic Finite Automaton (NFA) is simulated using backtracking. A tool to view the transition diagram of the finite automaton is provided. A Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA) can be additionally compiled using an optimizing compiler that also minimizes the number of states. Tools for converting an NFA to a DFA and for converting a DFA to a Turing machine are also provided. A preliminary testing of the toolkit has been performed in which the participating students observed that the toolkit is an interesting teaching tool and it helped them to acquire a better perception about finite automata. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The efficiency of the laboratory applications in the Electrical and Electronics major of technical and vocational education (TVE) has a significant importance. Due to this significance, the sustainability of training of trainers is extremely important for the successful training of trainees. In this study, distance learning is focused and an e-laboratory model is introduced for the target group of educators as the trainee. V-LAB and D-LAB hardware units are presented with their enhanced features for online laboratory applications. Wimax solution for wireless communication of this model is demonstrated. The performance evaluations of this system are also analyzed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20489

The purpose of this article is to show a software application made for online calibration via Internet from simple measuring instruments from the dimensional area (exterior micrometer and calliper). It also shows the educational results obtained in the teaching experiences where it has been used. The environment created makes it possible to replace real practices with virtual simulations where the student must make the proper metrological decisions and make the necessary calculations to determine the instruments' expanded uncertainty. This software has shown to be a very useful and efficient tool in training the distance learning students in the course titled: “Calibration Plan for Ensuring Quality in Industrial Laboratories,” offered by Technical University of Madrid. Furthermore, some very notable academic results have been achieved among students from two pilot groups for the Mechanical Engineering degree program. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Fortunately the design processes of steel buildings across Europe is eventually covered by a unified code: The Eurocode 3: “Design of steel structures.” Nevertheless, although Eurocodes will soon become mandatory documents, designs will not be standardized because each country has a set of National Annexes which must be taken into account when designing in that particular country. Furthermore, every country also has its own body of non-conflicting complementary information. A problem then arises when engineers need to produce designs in other European countries, either for a company based in one state or as individuals. Also, allowing engineers time out of the office for attendance at the intensive training courses which are required for earning experience on the new codes of design, frequently represents an obstacle for their employers. In an attempt to solve these problems, a strong trans-national partnership has been working to develop an ICT-supported, flexible training approach to allow designers to apply Eurocodes in accordance with the national regulations and practices of different member states. The resulting material in seven languages shows how to design a typical building according to the different national contexts. The developed portal incorporates facilities for course presentation, forums, blogs and on-line translation. The students thought that the portal was an effective tool that helped them to improve the quality and efficiency of their studies. In their opinion the web-course is well structured and they found the forum for discussion and the web-based tutoring system very helpful. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20490

This article describes an efficient method of teaching short circuit breaking test of high-voltage circuit breakers, to undergraduate students of power system groups in electrical engineering departments, as a part of a high-voltage course for senior undergraduate students. The article shows how to simulate the components of testing circuit and breaker in order to teach students the test. Evaluation of the simulation over several semesters with more than 40 students is very positive in terms of their developing confidence in and understanding of short circuit breaking test on high-voltage circuit breakers. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20491

For the successful adoption of Computer Based Learning (CBL), it is necessary to provide teachers with user-friendly authoring tools that guide them in the process of planning a course. It is important that the documents generated by these tools are compliant with CBL standards to ensure that the instructional designs made by the teachers remain valid regardless of the Learning Management System (LMS) used to deliver the course. IMS-Learning Design (IMS-LD) is one of the most accepted specifications by the educational community for modeling of learning processes. There are some authoring-tools that allow export learning designs in IMS-LD but they are not course-planning oriented. In addition, a big challenge is how to improve the user interfaces of these tools in order to be easier to use for regular teachers. This paper presents CourseEditor, a course planning authoring tool that allows a teacher to describe the complete planning of a course (objectives, contents, methodology, and evaluation) and export the results in an IMS-LD compatible format. The paper provides a novel modeling of course planning that takes into account ideas from different instructional theories. CourseEditor combines power and flexibility, with the simplicity of an interface that can be used by teachers with no technical background. The paper illustrates the use of the tool creating a course on Telematic Services in the context of a Telecommunications Engineering degree. In addition, the relationships of course planning and IMS-LD are presented, showing which information of course planning can be represented in IMS-LD and which not. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20486

This paper presents a new virtual laboratory tool which teaches sliding mode control (SMC) and proportional–integral–derivative (PID) control to graduate students. Additionally, it describes performance differences between two control methods graphically. This educational virtual laboratory tool contains the control of rotary inverted pendulum. This system is a typical example of nonlinear and under-actuated systems and also well-known in control engineering for practicing different control theories. At first, the nonlinear dynamic equations of the inverted pendulum are presented. Then a virtual laboratory tool is designed for SMC and PID. After that, the results are analyzed. The validity of designed tool is verified by an experiment. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20484

The determination of the factors influencing the effectiveness of algorithm visualization poses an interesting research question. In this paper, we present the results of a longitude empirical study regarding this question. The study was based on an evaluation of the Visual LinProg educational tool inside classrooms. Visual LinProg is a web-based educational tool, which solves linear programming problems using animation and visualization techniques. Visual LinProg was developed to be used in linear programming courses to supplement the teaching. Our empirical study is based on questionnaires that include quantitative and qualitative topics. This evaluation first indicates that Visual LinProg facilitates the learning of the revised simplex algorithm and second presents more results on factors influencing the understanding of this algorithm by the students/users of the Visual LinProg. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20485

Differential protection was already applied toward the end of the 19th century and was one of the first protection systems ever used. Faults are detected by comparison of the currents flowing into and out of the protected plant item. As a result of the fast tripping with absolute selectivity, it is suited as main protection of all important items of plant. The article presents an approach to teaching relay laboratory using specially designed exercises that can be done using MATLAB-SIMULINK. This article presents a MATLAB-SIMULINK-based technology to simulate differential relay for determining behavior of it during transformer internal fault protection. The results show that this simulation method can work properly and this design can be used for power system simulation in MATLAB-SIMULINK. Evaluation of the simulation with more than 60 students is very positive in terms of their developing confidence in and understanding of this kind of relay operation. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Program tracing is an important skill for programming learning, but novice programmers' tracing abilities are poor. This study designs a system to enable students to exercise program tracing and make students' program tracing processes visible to help teachers indicate students' errors in tracing execution flow, variable values, or I/O display. Comput Appl Eng Educ © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In the present article, a graphical user interface (GUI) application is introduced for undergraduate students to model a real system. The object is to provide experiences on modeling of a real system with the equipment in the control laboratory by using the graphical modeling methods. It is to show the students how a real system is connected to a computer. An experiment is assigned to the students to integrate their theoretical knowledge with their practical skills. Since classical courses are limited to the related theoretical knowledge given by an instructor, the students can gain valuable experiences with the developed GUI. The designed GUI application provides to the students to focus only on modeling methods. It is observed that the experiment increases the students' motivation resulting in enhanced education with respect to the classical education. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20482

The authorization is the complex process that guarantees the access to certain resources (physical or computer-based information system). In this article, we present our contributions to the creation and development of a new authorization concept based on qualifications to grant access to physical resources. The qualifications will be obtained through a learning process, and the access control to resources will be realized based on the qualifications, according to the abilities of the entities that request access right. This concept can be implemented by using any programming language, pointing out, in the same time, the necessity of using an integration platform. In this respect, we will present the phases of developing this concept, from the moment it became necessary to its abstractive representation, by going through its natural phases: definition of the component elements and their relations, workflow, and management. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20477

A geographic information system (GIS) is presented in this work with the aim of helping the application of problem-based learning process to show the students how to adopt the appropriate decisions for the adaptation of architectural barriers to ensure the universal accessibility in public buildings. The GIS developed here consists of three layers based on vector maps corresponding to buildings, potential routes and architectural barriers. Hyperlinks in the last layer allow access to some relevant information about each barrier, such as type, description and adaptation cost. Several tests have been carried out to show the capability of the implemented GIS to locate indoor barriers, determine suitable indoor routes by considering criteria such as paths lengths or the total cost of barrier elimination, and update the information corresponding to each architectural barrier. In addition, the application of the proposed GIS has also been explored for indoor route guidance with promising results. This investigation has been carried out with the aim of being combined with the problem-based learning process. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com); DOI 10.1002/cae.20442

This work presents the development of an experimental platform for remote control of Internet-connected systems. The aim is to describe and to evaluate this platform, which exhibits some interesting peculiarities w.r.t. the mainstream literature: real-time support over the Internet, capacity to handle loss/disorder of packets, and varying delays. Practical tests are given to show its capabilities to telecontrol different systems. The evaluation is carried out comparing the performance of some controllers for position coordination of a pair of local–remote Internet-connected systems. Besides, an assessment of platform usage and learning effectiveness was developed to conclude on its pedagogical viability in engineering education. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 203–213, 2013

This paper presents the navigation software called Ant Colony Test Center designed to teach the different stages involved in mobile robotics. The navigation problem consists of the four subproblems: world perception, path planning, path generation, and path tracking. This software based on ant colonies has two operational modes: virtual and on-line. In virtual mode, is able to achieve path generation, path planning and virtual path tracking at once, since the virtual mobile robots “ants” searches for the objective point generating feasible paths, then generate a set of subgoals to obtain the optimal path, since the optimal path was obtained using a cost function that considers the robot architecture, the optimal trajectory for the robot also is obtained. In on-line mode, the robot is able to sense the world using stereoscopic vision, the map is updated using epipolar geometry, and the on-line navigation problem is handled similar to the virtual mode. The software has many educational skills, since students can learn about path generation, optimal planning and path tracking using the heuristic methodology known as Ant Colony Optimization that recently has had good acceptance for solving discrete optimization planning problems. The platform is also a good tool to learn about stereoscopic vision and epipolar geometry that is one of the best sensing methods in mobile robotics. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 214–229, 2013

The research studies the relation of the learner's knowledge searching depth to his/her creativity when learner comes into contact with constructed knowledge. The digitized constructed knowledge environment has changed the way that knowledge has been presented through the books. By using information technology, learners now obtain knowledge rapidly in a computer-learning environment. When a learner facing a project, the way he/she searches information to build up his/her knowledge becomes a subject which is well worthy a discussion. This research first recorded each student viewing the mission-related instructional materials on computer pages in limited time. Followed by analyzing the route of subject's cognitive processes to study the relation of students who with different creativity performances to their knowledge searching depth. The participants are vocational high school students from the innovated project design class and their projects in this experiment are creative poster design. Researchers recorded and analyzed participants' viewing routes among supplied poster-design instructional materials. Researchers expect to find out the relation by discussing the knowledge searching process between different creativity performers. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 230–236, 2013

This paper compares two different approaches for teaching complex programming concepts in lab sessions. The first approach is based on the widely held assumption that the programming knowledge and skills which the student obtains are predominantly acquired from classroom activities undertaken at the instigation of the teacher. This automatically implies that the student must attend a minimum number of lab sessions. The second approach is to motivate student learning via a full-term activity based on the implementation of computer games from scratch. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 237–244, 2013

Using mobile agents to assist students in virtual learning environments has become increasingly common for hands-on experiments. Although virtual learning environments provide mobile agents as a platform for services to learners, one type of mobile agent only serves in one course, bringing possible benefits to users. This study was conducted to use agent techniques to construct a ubiquitous teaching assistant (u-TA) for assisting students solve problems in laboratory courses. We gave the u-TA enhanced social skills so that it can reduce the burden on teachers. The proposed u-TA system consists of both Web-based and instant messenger-based (IM-based) interfaces, and the u-TA can learn from other agents by analyzing their dialogues. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the u-TA and the results show that the u-TA can assist students and share the TA's workload in courses. The experimental results also demonstrated that the u-TA has good communications ability; its two user interfaces can increase interactions with students. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 245–255, 2013

This article distinguishes which generic skills are the key to enable newly graduated engineers, basically computer and telecommunication engineers, to enter the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, satisfying industry demand in Spain. It also demonstrates significant differences between the engineering degrees (at graduate level) and the engineering master degrees (at post-graduate level) related to skills needs. Furthermore, this work establishes the fact that there is a gap between the expectations of the ICT sector and the computer-based engineering curricula and telecommunication engineering curricula the graduated receives, and where this gap appears in relation to generic competences or skills. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 256–264, 2013

This paper presents an innovative academic experience regarding the use of PlanetLab—an open large-scale platform over the Internet—in engineering courses on distributed systems. By integrating a live-deployment environment such as PlanetLab into distributed-systems courses, software implementations developed by students can interact with instructors' implementations in a real Internet-distributed scenario. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experience regarding the use of the PlanetLab nodes available over Internet to teach distributed computing concepts to engineering students, since most of the existing literature on distributed-systems courses describes only learning experiences in lab-simulated or lab-emulated scenarios. As discussed in this paper, experimenting with a real laboratory over the Internet adds some complexity to students' practical activities, but it also facilitates a deeper and more intensive learning experience. A survey among students shows some clear benefits of this approach over the use of simulation labs, as well as some pitfalls that must be avoided whenever possible. The paper ends with a set of recommendations for instructors that might want to design similar courses as well as with an overview of future work to be performed in this field. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 265–275, 2013

The need for proper use of process simulators in engineering education is addressed through the modeling and optimization of a crude distillation unit. This exercise has been presented to Chemical Engineering students to help them relate concepts learned in class and the use of software tools widely available in the practice of engineering. The unit, composed of three distillation columns, is simulated using the equilibrium model and the Peng–Robinson equation of state; it is solved using a multiple-step initialization and the Inside-Out algorithm. An analysis of the system's degrees of freedom is made in order to specify a base case that is used as the starting point for the optimization. The maximization of the stabilized gasoline flow is achieved through the use of the Sequential Quadratic Programming (SPQ) algorithm. Throughout the exercise, the importance of understanding the mathematical model of the process and the algorithms used is emphasized. The exercise's effectiveness is evaluated by the students considering the achievement of ABET outcomes. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 276–286, 2013

Using computers for assessment can provide several benefits for educators and test-takers. However, in the literature, there is no consensus on the equivalence of paper-and-pencil (P&P) and computer-based test (CBT) environments. Additionally, these studies fail to address the engineering domain. Our main assumption is that, if we could define the confounding factors to satisfy that these two versions of the tests provide equivalent results, then especially in the first year courses of the engineering education programs, we could get several benefits of the CBT environments. Accordingly, in this study, students' performance on different test modes was evaluated on 209 first year engineering students of a chemistry course. The results of this study showed that there is no significant performance difference between P&P and CBT. By comparing results with the previous studies, this study concludes that personal characteristics of test takers, the features of CBT systems, and the test content are all possible confounding factors when comparing test modes and need to be considered by the implementers. The results of this study show that once these factors are controlled, students' performance on CBTs and P&P tests in chemistry courses will not vary. This finding is encouraging the educators to get benefits of CBTs without any affect on students' performance. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 287–293, 2013

Computational methods are being widely used in engineering analysis, design, and research. In order to prepare the students for engineering practice or graduate school, the undergraduate engineering curriculum needs to provide sufficient exposure to computational methods during the 4-year undergraduate education. This paper summarizes the introduction of freshman students to finite element modeling as a part of a hands-on multidisciplinary project-based course. The project focuses on improving students' understanding of structural behavior through experimental and computational methods. The goals of implementing finite element modeling in this project are to enhance the mechanics understanding of students, to increase the students' interest in engineering, and to introduce computational methods to undergraduate students at an early stage during their undergraduate education. The incorporation of finite element modeling in the project provides a powerful tool to visualize the theoretical concepts that are new to the freshman level students such as stress and strain and help to improve their understanding of the experimental observations made in the laboratory setting. The student evaluations show that the finite element modeling part of the project is intellectually stimulating and leads to development of new knowledge and skills. The exposure of freshman students to finite element modeling through a project-based course is expected to help their development as engineers and increase their preparedness for engineering practice or graduate school after graduation. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 294–299, 2013

In a typical control systems course, students are expected to develop the notion of open loop and closed loop first. Under the feedback, traditional control theory offers many elegant solutions to control problems yet teaching those concepts experimentally is an art. This article describes how the notion of feedback control could be developed by utilizing a computer aided experimental setup available at the laboratories of TOBB University of Economics and Technology. A DC motor control system is considered and step by step development of the understanding of feedback control is explained. Didactic aspect is taken care of throughout the manuscript and extensions to research are emphasized. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 300–312, 2013

The paper demonstrates how a four-tank laboratory process equipped with a modern distributed control system (DCS) is used in different control engineering laboratories for the undergraduate and graduate levels. This includes the utilization of commercial tools for DCS engineering as well as the design and commissioning of traditional and advanced control solutions. Using the same pilot plant and control system in different modules lowers the costs, allows the reutilization of results and enables an efficient laboratory organization. It also supports the process of learning the inner context of different process control related subjects. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 313–321, 2013

This study proposes a graphical human interface technology for use in mechatronics learning. This learning system elucidates, for students, the principles, function, and application of mechatronics, and also demonstrates the use of graphical monitoring and control technology. Students can, in advance, design a graphical monitor program to monitor and control mechatronics module. Students learn, verify, and acquire lectured concepts by performing mechatronics experiments in the laboratory. The most important part of the system is the implementation of the experimental module in laboratory sessions, using the graphical interface technology. The suitability of this technology of the laboratory concept is demonstrated in the Department of Industrial Education and Technology at National Changhua University of Education. Preliminary evaluation of the laboratory platform was encouraging and has shown that it has achieved success in helping students understand concepts and master basic technology. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 322–327, 2013

At the nexus of education and technology, blended learning is growing rapidly. Integrating face-to-face and online learning, blending can enhance learning and optimize seat time. This paper describes the use of the blended e-learning model in a course “Data Structures and Algorithms” given at the Afyon Kocatepe University, Turkey. This model is realized as a combination of a face-to-face environment and online learning, using the University's Learning Management System (LMS) named @KU-UZEM. The LMS consists of many applications in accordance with SCORM standards, such as, student records, user roles, courses, exams security applications, student affairs, counseling services, internal communication, director processes and evaluation. It provides whole software infrastructure by a virtual academic institution and is currently used in Afyon Kocatepe University. This paper describes both the technology for course design and programme redesign adopted a blended learning approach with both face-to-face and online learning aimed at enhancing the students' control over their own learning. According to the obtained results with the performed experimental evaluation, the realized blended learning model provided more effective and efficient educational experience rather than traditional, face-to-face learning. A survey conducted at the end of the course also showed that students were satisfied with the pedagogical approach, and their academic achievements were also better than expected. Particularly important is that the dropout rate was greatly diminished, which could be related to students' satisfaction with the support they received from the teacher and the system. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 328–342, 2013

Around 20% of the population worldwide speaks Mandarin as the language of daily communication. For this reason, Mandarin learning has recently been getting more and more popular around the world. More and more people are coming to Taiwan and China from abroad to learn Mandarin at a wide variety of language learning centers. An effective and convenient mobile Mandarin learning system will people to learn Mandarin anytime and anywhere. The TRIZ theory was developed based on innovation theory by the Russian scholar, Genrich Altshuller, in 1946. The important features are the contradiction matrix and 40 principles. There are 39 corresponding parameters for finding out the suggestion on how to solve problems based on the principles. In the study, TRIZ theory is applied to discuss problems for constructing a mobile learning system. There is a shortage of information about the development of the mobile learning system by the application of TRIZ theory. TRIZ theory is found to provide systematic and effective analysis for solving problems. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 343–348, 2013

Early fault detection and diagnosis of high-performance electric motors has been an active area of research for the past two decades. This work presents a practical session that facilitates instructing students in this field. To meet this objective, fault diagnostic methods based on the Fourier transform and the wavelet transform are successfully applied by means of processing and examining the frequency content of the stator currents acquired from healthy and faulty permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs). The goal of this practical lab is to introduce Master's degree students to the topic of fault detection by covering both stationary and nonstationary operating conditions of the motor under study. The Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) has successfully incorporated the learning methodology proposed in this paper in a practical session of an electronic engineering course. The effectiveness of the proposed practical lab has been assessed using the results of a satisfaction questionnaire answered by students involved in the course. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 349–359, 2013

Looking back 30 years ago, the advances in teaching have accompanied the technology evolution. As soon as the technology progressed, new teaching tools began to appear. This work describes one of these technological advances, Interactivity. Several definitions of Interactivity are presented from different points of view. Afterwards, the influence of Interactivity on teaching is discussed presenting the advantages and drawbacks of this information methodology on education. The Automatic Control education field is one of the areas where Interactivity has had a major influence. Hence, this works also describes why Interactivity is very important in engineering education, focusing in the Automatic Control field and presenting some interactive tools as examples of this fact. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 360–371, 2013

We present an interactive MATLAB-based demo program devoted to teaching undergraduate students the behavior of the sum of independent random variables. The user chooses the type of the variables, and the parameters of these variables. The sum is shown in the time domain followed by the estimation of the probability density of the sum using a histogram. It is subsequently shown that the probability density of the sum of random variables represents the convolution of the density functions of the corresponding variables. The Central Limit Theorem and the progression of the sum towards this limit are illustrated in terms of the number of summands. The software can be used as a complement to theoretical classes or alone as a self-study tool. Student evaluation of the program is also included. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 372–385, 2013