Journal ArticleDOI
MATLAB Meets LEGO Mindstorms—A Freshman Introduction Course Into Practical Engineering
Alexander Behrens,Linus Atorf,Robert Schwann,Bernd Neumann,Rainer Schnitzler,Johannes Ballé,Thomas Herold,Aulis Telle,Tobias G. Noll,Kay Hameyer,Til Aach +10 more
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TLDR
How the laboratory course is organized and how it induces students to think as actual engineers would in solving real-world tasks with limited resources are described are described.Abstract:
In today's teaching and learning approaches for first-semester students, practical courses more and more often complement traditional theoretical lectures. This practical element allows an early insight into the real world of engineering, augments student motivation, and enables students to acquire soft skills early. This paper describes a new freshman introduction course into practical engineering, which has been established within the Bachelor of Science curriculum of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of RWTH Aachen University, Germany. The course is organized as an eight-day, full-time block laboratory for over 300 freshman students, who were supervised by more than 60 tutors from 23 institutes of the Electrical Engineering Department. Based on a threefold learning concept comprising mathematical methods, MATLAB programming, and practical engineering, the students were required to transfer mathematical basics to algorithms in MATLAB in order to control LEGO Mindstorms robots. Toward this end, a new toolbox, called the ?RWTH-Mindstorms NXT Toolbox,? was developed, which enables the robots to be controlled remotely via MATLAB from a host computer. This paper describes how the laboratory course is organized and how it induces students to think as actual engineers would in solving real-world tasks with limited resources. Evaluation results show that the project improves the students' MATLAB programming skills, enhances motivation, and enables a peer learning process.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Using LEGO NXT Mobile Robots With LabVIEW for Undergraduate Courses on Mechatronics
TL;DR: Lab work and student competitions based on the LEGO NXT Mindstorms kits and standard LabVIEW are proposed to stimulate design and experimentation with real hardware and representative software in courses where mobile robotics is adopted as a motivating platform to introduce mechatronics competencies.
Journal ArticleDOI
A sampled literature review of design-based learning approaches: a search for key characteristics
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify key characteristics of design-based learning in higher engineering education and identify four relevant dimensions for organizing these characteristics: the project characteristics, the role of the teacher, the assessment methods, and the social context.
Journal ArticleDOI
A LEGO Mindstorms NXT approach for teaching at Data Acquisition, Control Systems Engineering and Real-Time Systems undergraduate courses
Ana Cruz-Martín,Juan-Antonio Fernández-Madrigal,Cipriano Galindo,Javier Gonzalez-Jimenez,C. Stockmans-Daou,J. L. Blanco-Claraco +5 more
TL;DR: The approach is described and the results are presented, which assess the higher motivational adequacy of using a complete robot in these subjects and also the real fulfillment of the other requirements along several academic years.
Journal ArticleDOI
Robotics applications grounded in learning theories on tertiary education: A systematic review
TL;DR: Empirical evidence suggests the effectiveness of robotics as a learning complementary tool in tertiary education and suggests that some literature proposals can be useful in practice, and points out future directions for practitioners and researchers in education.
GNU General Public License
TL;DR: Licenza di tipo copyleft, scritta da Richard Stallman per il progetto GNU, permette la redistribuzione del software a condizione che il prodotto derivato sia rilasciato sotto la stessa licenza.
References
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