E-learning in Process Control Education
Educating chemical engineers for coming challenges
Chemical Engineering Education -Poster Session (T6-P)
Keywords: e-learning, LMS, education, process control, information technologies
The paper presents some new features in the course Automatic Control Fundamentals that have been developed in the last few years at the Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. These involve intensive use of information technologies and reduction of repetitive pedagogic work using e-learning techniques.
The course Automatic Control Fundamentals is taught for all undergraduate students at the FCFT. The main topics of the course are modeling of chemical processes, closed-loop, stability, PID controller design and control of chemical processes. Virtual animated processes are used in simulations and their number will increase in the future.
Almost all tasks in the laboratory exercises of the course are based on MATLAB/Simulink. To enable the students to use the same or similar working environment individually on their home computers, we use the MATLAB Web Server (MWS). The MWS allows solving problems as e.g. polynomial mathematical operations, step responses of LTI models, process model simulations, etc.
The new self-learning package covering all topics of the course has been established on the Internet and it includes study materials, files for download, information about the course, Internet version of all course topic problems, on-line tests and preparation for written tests, LMS Moodle e-learning portal for gradebooks, attendances, quizzes, etc. All this can be found in the web page at http://www.kirp.chtf.stuba.sk/lcza (in Slovak).
It has been decided that each student should have an individual assignment and that all students have assignments of a similar difficulty. Therefore, we have decided to build up an Internet e-learning module. The module consists of two parts. The first one connects individual student assignments and solutions for teacher with Open Source project Moodle. The second part of the module is scientific and deals with assignment generation for all students. MATLAB scripts and functions generate random numbers for a particular problem, solve it, and generate the result as a HTML file suitable to be included in the first part of the module.
All mentioned changes have been introduced in order to bring the course in line with current trends in education and to increase its rating and attraction among students.
See the full pdf manuscript of the abstract.
Presented Monday 17, 13:30 to 15:00, in session Chemical Engineering Education -Poster Session (T6-P).
