How Might Engineering Education Transition From In-Person To Hybrid and Online Modalities? — from insidehighered.com by Joshua Kim
Three questions for Rick Hill, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Detroit Mercy.
Excerpts:
Tools I use in my classroom, including MATLAB and Simulink, are key to recreating the in-person lab experience and giving engineering students access to the same equipment as engineers in the field. Students can gain experience analyzing data, developing algorithms and creating models. They’re developing skills in the design of systems with multidomain models, simulation and deployment without the need for code.
Virtual labs allow an instructor to easily introduce “experiments” into nonlab classes, either in the middle of a lecture or in homework. I do this with live scripts and simulation models. It saves me and the students the time of having to set up and debug the lab hardware and saves the cost and space of the physical laboratory while providing a very quick and controlled environment for doing experiments.