From MATLAB' "Easy Programming" to student' Own Discoveries
Yevgeny Gayev, Aerospace Control Systems, National Aviation University (Kyiv, Ukraine)
One of the most important challenges for modern education is the proper use of power of modern computer technologies. S.Wolfram, for example,agitates for learning mathematics through cellular automata with his system Mathematica. Your humble servant, however, sees "active learning", method of "student' own discoveries" to be the most effective in education of engineers and researches.It means the students, at least better ones, shall to reproduce past discoveries in science and technologies by their virtual modelling instead of boring learning theorems and facts by heart. With computers, it requires few minutes instead of decades but inspires students to further research. I've got an opportunity to demonstrate this while teaching discipline "Information and Coding Theory" [1-3] and synthetic discipline"Modelling Complex Systems" [4,5].Similar, many other engineering disciplines may also apply programming for making particular models and "playing"with them, researching the roles of modelling parameters.
What the computer tool does suit best for such "easy programming"? I.e. for making such a computer simulations that focuses on the problem but minimizes secondary details of programming technology? Python becomes the most popular language in last years. Note that it re-employed many features of the MATLAB but the later still consumes significantly less time forgetting result. I guess so that MATLAB isthe best choice.I would suggest so that engineering MATLAB-programming to become the key discipline that determines any subsequent achievements of students in high school.
That is why, it is worth to start first teaching year curriculum with the discipline "Algorithmization and MATLAB' Easy Programming". Even Mathematics, traditionally the most difficult discipline, may employ the previous one to make itself an "experimental science".
Of course, the discipline suggested should be exciting itself. Our article [7] suggests a sequence of rather simple problems and algorithms that employ graphical power of the MATLAB to produce admirable results demonstrated in the Figure below. Our beginners were delighted with them. Such effective start of the course [6,8] encouraged beginners to much more complex problems suggested next in [6,8] and, finally, to professional disciplines treated under the view point of own student discoveries [1-6]. Such approach was also successfully used in Diploma Thesis of students. Several their scientific papers like [9,10] and others were published as well.
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.MATLAB' "easy programming" for discipline "Information Processes and Coding". --Workshop: Teaching Computation in the Sciences Using MATLAB®. –Northfield: Carleton College, https://serc.carleton.edu/teaching_computation/workshop_2019/essays/231265.html
3.Gayev Ye. Information Processes Theory by "own student' discoveries" with MATLAB and Java. –Textbook in Ukrainian (in preparation)
4.Gayev Ye.MATLAB is an "easy programming" tool to each engineering discipline. –Workshop: Teaching Computation in the Sciences Using MATLAB®. –Northfield: Carleton College, https://serc.carleton.edu/teaching_computation/workshop_2019/essays/231265.html
5.Gayev Ye.Modelling of Complex Systems as "own student' discoveries" with MATLAB and Java. –Textbook in Ukrainian (in preparation)
6.Gayev Ye.A., Nesterenko B.N.MATLAB for Math and Programming. –Kyiv: Nat. Aviation Univ.,2015,100 pp.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303856550_MATLAB_for_Math_and_Programming
7.Gayev Ye.O., Azarskov V.M.MATLAB for Ukrainian education. IV All-Ukrainian Conference "Modern information technologies in education and science", Zhitomor, Nov. 2019, pp. 18 --21. (in Ukrainian) http://eprints.zu.edu.ua/30639/1/Zbirnuk_Zhytomyr_IKT_2019.pdf
8.Gayev Ye.O., Azarskov V.M.Modern Programming for Engineers. V.1, 2019; v.2,2016 (in Ukrainian).
9.Gayev Ye.A., Malinina D.Parametric rose as an object in mathematics, programming and aestaetics. Informational technologies in Education, No1, 2015, с.9-24, (in Russian), http://ite.kspu.edu/ru/webfm_send/929
10.Gayev Ye.A., Kalmikov V.V.The Travelling Salesman Problem in the engineering education programming curriculum. Proc. of Nat. aviation university, 2017.http://jrnl.nau.edu.ua/index.php/visnik/article/view/11989/16164
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