Academic Journal

Computer Animation Education Online: A Tool to Teach Control Systems Engineering throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic

Bibliographic Details
Title: Computer Animation Education Online: A Tool to Teach Control Systems Engineering throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors: Patete, Anna, Marquez, Ronald (ORCID 0000-0001-6003-7487)
Source: Education Sciences. 2022 12.
Abstract: The world is changing, and university education must be able to adapt to it. New technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics are requiring tools such as simulation and process control to develop products and services. Thus, control systems engineering schools are adapting to new educational frameworks tailored to deploy promising and feasible new technologies. Herein, we have relied on computer animation-based education and its implementation as an online project-based strategy to attain the objectives and goals of the control systems engineering courses at University of Los Andes, Venezuela. The ControlAnimation library developed in Mathematica program in 2002 has been used as a tool to teach control systems engineering courses since 2008 and with greater prominence since 2020, when the stay-at-home orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic were enacted. Consequently, computer animation-based education has proven its feasibility as an online tool combined with project-based learning techniques, thus allowing students to interact with an animated control system by changing the mathematical model and the design parameters of control laws in a comfortable and somewhat playful way. This enabled new capabilities to study the dynamic behaviors of primordial control systems online. In addition, it allowed students to co-identify and relate in a more intuitive way to the mathematical models and control equations with the physical behavior of the real control systems.
Availability: MDPI AG. Klybeckstrasse 64, 4057 Basel, Switzerland. e-mail: education@mdpi.com; e-mail: indexing@mdpi.com; Web site: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 20
Publication Date: 2022
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Postsecondary Education
Descriptors: Animation, Distance Education, Electronic Learning, COVID-19, Pandemics, Active Learning, Student Projects, College Students, Foreign Countries, Engineering Education, Teaching Methods
Geographic Terms: Venezuela
ISSN: 2227-7102
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2022
Accession Number: EJ1353777
ISSN: 2227-7102
Database: ERIC