Implementation of Interactive Technology to Improve Students’ Active Learning and Engagement in MATLAB Programming

MATLAB programming is a required course in the curriculum of Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at our University. As the first-year fundamental level class, most of the freshman students experience various challenges in this course. For the majority of the students, this usually is the first time exposed to a programming language, which is quite different from the course format that they are familiar with. Due to large class size (~130 students), the students might not be able to receive enough attention or timely feedbacks on their work in or outside of the classroom. All of these challenges often lead to poor student learning outcomes, since they can easily find themselves struggling with the course at the very beginning of the class. To improve the students' engagements and promote active learning inside and outside the classroom, I have redesigned this class by introducing two online interactive technology tools – Kahoot! and MATLAB grader. This class is composed of three main components offered in a weekly basis – lectures, labs, and homework. The first lecture introduces fundamental concept, and then the following lecture will solidate students' understanding on the course. To boost the engagement, participation, and motivation in this large class, I adopted Kahoot! Quiz as interactive activities in the class. At the end of each lecture, 5-6 questions are displayed to evaluate the student understanding on lecture content and to collect students' feedbacks. Between two lectures, each student takes an 80-minute laboratory and completes problems by programming in MATLAB software with the support from instructor and TAs. The homework is assigned after the second lecture, and the students are asked to complete the homework on the MATLAB Grader platform, instead of in the MATLAB environment. This platform allows the instructor to scale the assessments for each problem, provide hints and guidelines for students to complete a problem and automatically grade the problem to give timely response. The student performances with and without these interactive tools are compared to demonstrate that student learning outcomes and programming skills are significantly improved in a large class setting due to prompt student-instructor interactions.