Module 1 - Bungee Experiment

This folder contains Live Scripts to gently introduce students to the MATLAB IDE and beginning commands.

Module 1 consists of five lectures which are best to do in the recommended sequence as the goal is to gentely introduce students to MATLAB, Excel, and linear mathematical modeling.

1.Lecture 1: Engage in the Activity (Handout & Live Script: Module1_2_BungeeExperiment.mlx

2.Lecture 2: Plotting Data – by Hand (PowerPoint slides for guidance)

3.Lecture 3: Plotting Data – Excel (PowerPoint slides for guidance)

4.Lecture 4: Plotting Data – MATLAB (Live Script: Module1_3_BungeeExperiment_MATLAB.mlx

5.Lecture 5: LLSFT (Two Parts: PowerPoint for Excel guidance; Live Script: Module1_4_LLSFT_MATLAB.mlx)

The first-year engineering program at Hofstra University consists of a computer programming for engineers’ course, and a two-semester sequence of engineering design. Before the fall of 2018, the computer programming for engineers’ course covered algorithms, logic, flowcharting and programming of solutions to engineering problems through the MATLAB® integrated development environment (IDE) [1]. A redesign of the course began in the Fall of 2018 [2] to add Excel and math instruction. Existing hands-on activities were repurposed [3] to serve as and form the foundation of this new, activity centric model learning approach. This is different from incorporating lab experiments as had been done previously [4] in that the activities are designed to be gentler and friendlier for first-year students as well as more easily portable. As students engage in the activity to collect data, they develop collaboration and cooperation skills with their classmates; building a learning support group to help them on their academic journey. The data from the activity is then used to build Excel, math, and MATLAB® skills through more, active learning assignments completed in class. The pedagogy has been created for both first-year engineering students at the university and high school juniors and seniors engaged in the engineering department’s Pathways to Engineering outreach program at four local high schools.

This courseware has been developed by Lynn Albers, PhD at Hofstra University in collaboration with MathWorks.

Course Activites

The course is designed into 5 modules:

1) Bungee Experiment - where students do a practical experiment (original activity developed at Indiana University, Bloomington and funded in part by the National Science Foundation and Indiana University 1995) to take independent measurements. The measurements are then processed and fitted via Excel and MATLAB, with the aim to understand Linear Least Squares Fitting (LLSFT). It is comprised of 4 MATLAB Live Scripts with accompanying PowerPoint lectures:

• Module1-1-ENGG010Introduction.mlx - This live script details how students associate to the campus wide license through the portal, access MATLAB Online and set up MATLAB Drive folders for their course content.
• Module1-2-BungeeExperiment.mlx - The instructions and pre-lab discussion for the hand-ons activity to help an action figure safely jump from a predetermined height with the help of elastic bands (original activity developed at Indiana University, Bloomington and funded in part by the National Science Foundation and Indiana University 1995).
• Module1-3-BungeeExperiment-MATLAB.mlx - The bungee experiment instructions in an interactive live scripts, where students can put their answers and measurements directly into the live script introducing tables, plotting and curve fitting in live script sections.
• Module1-4-LLSFT-MATLAB.mlx - Explanation of the mathematics behind LLSFT, and with activities to calculate the slope, intercept and correlation coefficient for the team and class data.

Suggested homework for this module includes the following trainings from the Self-Paced Online Courses: MATLAB Onramp + Curve Fitting Onramp + Statistics Onramp + Common Data Analysis Techniques.