Work In Progress: Improving Mechanical Engineering Students’ Programming Skills Through Hands-On Learning Activities Designed in MATLAB Live Editor

With the advances and rapid improvements in technology, engineering students are expected to have programming skills to keep up with the evolving demands in their fields.However, among the various engineering programs including mechatronics and robotics, computer, and electrical, mechanical engineering students face the biggest challenge.While they are known to be good problem solvers, they often encounter struggles in programming.This challenge primarily stems from the limited programming courses offered in the curriculum and a lack of exposure to low-cost data acquisition systems like Arduino within their laboratory environments.To give an example, the educational laboratory equipment favorably utilized in mechanical vibrations and control theory courses is tailored with custom software and data acquisition systems to implement inputs and record output data.This inhibits students' understanding of signal flow and data recording.Consequently, students struggle to replicate similar tasks using low-cost alternatives to actuate the mechanisms or design a controller to accomplish desired tasks.To address this problem, we collected feedback from undergraduate mechanical engineering students enrolled in mechanical vibrations (junior level) and control theory courses (senior level) to assess their confidence levels and proficiency in programming, identifying areas where improvement is needed.We created a series of in-class and out-of-class learning activities designed in MATLAB Live editor for students taking mechanical vibrations and vibrations and control labs courses that incorporate programming.These activities are specifically designed to encourage and support students taking the mechanical vibrations course to serve as a candidate.Our continuous work involves iterative development and refinement of these activities based on ongoing feedback and assessment.Through these activities, we aim to bridge the programming gap and empower our students to excel in the increasingly technology-driven field of mechanical engineering.