Enhancing Project-Based Learning with Modeling and Simulation

Modeling and simulation with MATLAB and Simulink help students gain deeper insight into physical problems, complementing the advantages of project-based learning. Many employers find recruiting graduates from science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects with appropriate skills very difficult. Much of their concern revolves around big picture thinking, ability to approach problems from a multidisciplinary systems perspective, building mathematical models with varying complexity, and using software simulation tools such as Simulink in the overall verification and validation processes. Universities and colleges on the other hand have to educate students in the underlying principles and science as well as a rapidly expanding set of technologies to prepare them to be researchers, developers, engineers, and scientists. Integration of MATLAB and Simulink throughout the courses in a typical engineering curriculum, coupled with use of modeling and simulations to complement experiments and real-life projects, provides educators with a powerful set of tools to tackle the widening gap in the skills employers require from graduates and the need to cover the fundamentals of engineering science.

About the Presenter: Coorous Mohtadi is a member of MathWorks technical marketing team supporting universities focusing on the application of MATLAB and Simulink in laboratories and curriculum development. Prior to joining MathWorks in 2007, he was the European technical manager for Temperature, Process Control, and Component products at Omron Electronics Europe, where he worked in various capacities for 10 years. Before that, he was the chief control engineer for Eurotherm Controls for six years and a postdoctoral research fellow at Oxford and University of Alberta, Canada for four years. Coorous holds a D.Phil. in model-based predictive control and an M.A. in engineering science, both from University of Oxford.