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Abstract The Virtual Laboratory: A Natural Vehicle for Simulation in Engineering Education As technology trends continue to evolve, educators must adapt to a rapidly changing landscape. Simulation is an essential component of new industry trends, allowing the design and planning of complex systems 1. While modeling and simulation are highly valued in industry, education has not met the demand for the graduates trained with the required skills 2. In education, simulation can be used either to learn how to model systems or learn about a domain using a premade model 3. By learning to model systems with industry tools, students will be better prepared for the professional world. Using premade models exposes students to prototyping, develops intuition, and reinforces fundamental mathematical concepts. It is also possible to integrate these approaches in a complementary way with students alternating between studying pre-developed modules using mathematical analyses and constructing simple examples. A challenge with this approach is the time investment required to create robust simulations. Designing materials that allow students to model systems without extensive prerequisite knowledge of specialized software or programming languages presents another obstacle. While many excellent online resources exist, they often lack interactivity or customizability necessary for fast integration into an existing course. New customizable resources will allow instructors to quickly merge simulation with industry tools into their classroom. In this work, we present two resources designed to meet the mentioned needs: 1) a virtual controls laboratory and 2) a DC circuit analysis virtual laboratory. These resources provide instructors with simulations of physical systems using Simscape along with detailed lab manuals to describe the process and assigned tasks. The mechanical systems, such as the rotary pendulum, include 3D visualizations to enhance the realism of the simulation. To reinforce fundamental mathematics, DC circuit virtual labs incorporate guides for performing standard analyses, such as mesh analysis or transfer function analysis. The lab experiments promote active learning by having students interact directly with the pre-developed simulations: e.g., adjusting the PID constants in a controlled system or the capacitance value in an RLC circuit while the simulation is running. To introduce the students to industry tools, there are opportunities to build and tune models of PID controllers in Simulink and electrical circuits in Simscape, among others. These virtual laboratories can help instructors to achieve several education goals in their classrooms simultaneously such as: 1) they lower the barrier for integrating simulation models into course curriculum, 2) encouraging active learning, 3) enhancing "learning by doing", 4) increasing students' engagement with course topics especially with the challenging concepts. 1 W. De Paula Ferreira, F. Armellini, and L.A. De Santa-Eulalia, "Simulation in industry 4.0: A state-of-the-art review," Elsevier, Computers & Industrial Engineering, Volume 149, Nov. 2020. 2 A.J. Magana, "Modeling and simulation in engineering education: A learning progression, "Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, October 2017. 3 A.J., Magana and T. de Jong, "Modeling and simulation practices in engineering education," Computer Applications in Engineering Education, pp. 731-738, June 2018.
Hong et al. (Thu,) studied this question.