MATLAB' "easy programming" for discipline "Information Processes and Coding"
Yevgeny Gayev, Aerospace Control Systems Department, National Aviation University, Kyiv, UkraineBeing familiar with MATLAB (see my Essay1) allows to educator realize pedagogical approach of "own student' discoveries" in their teaching, and, from another hand, allows to students of elder study years an active learning with elements of research from their side. I am going to illustrate this point with one particular discipline as an example.
"Information Processes and Coding" is actually a Summa Technologiae in the sense of Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem; it collects a number of discoveries and inventions in coding and transferring data since 1920th. Most textbooks present them in a rather passive manner. Our idea lies in using MATLAB by students to examine personally main the above technologies and to come finally to "Digital laboratory" [1].
The course starts with learning coding; the students have been suggested to develop some programs for doing it. One of the most pleasant programs, the Morse coding, will be demonstrated [1,2]. Quantitative measuring of information, i.e. Entropy of alphabets and of a transfer channel, is the next thing to apply MATLAB effectively. An interesting research for students are here to obtain experimentally probability of certain characters in, say, English texts, or even conditional probability one character following another one. Such tasks were a very time-consuming in our nearest past. Doing this, we deal with constant-length and variable-length codes, and come to the problem of the better and optimal coding to research next.
Certain space is devoted to simulation of information transfer channels with noise. The letter for binary codes is imitated with random number generators. Some pleasant GUI-programs will be demonstrated. Students come to idea of error-correcting codes. Some technologies are programmed and researched by students.
Such pedagogical approach keeps students involved in education, makes them co-authors of famous scientists and their inventions.References
1. Gayev Ye.A. et all. Digital Laboratory of Information Processes Theory: an innovative educational approach. XIII Int. conference "Avia-2017". April 19-21, Kyiv: NAU, 2017. 9.42, p. 638--641. (http://avia.nau.edu.ua/doc/avia-2017/AVIA_2017.pdf )
2. Gayev Ye., Azarskov V. Educational "Own Discoveries" Method by an easy MATLAB-Programming for Engineers. https://www.academia.edu/37811759/Educational_Own_Discoveries_Method_by_an_easy_MATLAB-Programming_for_Engineers_How_to_teach_future_engineers_that_are_students_yet.