(379b) Matlab Live Scripts for Teaching and Evaluating Fundamental Process Control Concepts

MATLAB introduced Live Scripts in 2016. Live Scripts add a variety of features to traditional MATLAB programming code files, including formatted text blocks and interactive controls. These features offer an opportunity to improve the education of undergraduate students through experiential learning. Using Live Scripts, students can read through detailed equations formatted using LaTeX. Mathematical concepts can be illustrated with inline plots visualizing the equations. User interface controls can be added to the Live Script to allow the user to modify the plot, actively seeing the results of their actions and how a parameter change or value selection impacts the resulting plot. These interactive plots can be used by a new user without any knowledge of the underlying MATLAB code. Additionally, the script can submit online scores so student comprehension can be evaluated efficiently.

This work presents multiple examples of Live Scripts for illustration of selected basic process control concepts. These topics considered include Laplace transform of functions, adding simple functions in the time domain, and step-response FOTD modeling. The Live Scripts can also be used to submit student information for the exercise to a Google Docs spreadsheet. Student response to use of these Live Scripts for education and evaluation will be presented.