Performance Assessment of Undergraduate Vibrations Course

Performance Assessment of Undergraduate Vibrations Course“Vibrations” and “Dynamic Systems and Control” are two of the required upper-levelengineering courses in the undergraduate Mechanical Engineering program at ourinstitution. Both courses have the “Introduction to Differential Equations” as one...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAssociation for Engineering Education - Engineering Library Division Papers p. 22.1152.1
Main Authors Sala, Anca L, Echempati, Raghu
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published Atlanta American Society for Engineering Education-ASEE 26.06.2011
Subjects
Control systems
Differential equations
Dynamical systems
Mechanical engineering
Performance assessment
Students
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Summary:Performance Assessment of Undergraduate Vibrations Course“Vibrations” and “Dynamic Systems and Control” are two of the required upper-levelengineering courses in the undergraduate Mechanical Engineering program at ourinstitution. Both courses have the “Introduction to Differential Equations” as one of thepre-requisite courses. “Vibrations” however is not required to be completed before“Dynamic Systems and Control”. This paper analyzes student performance in the twocourses in order to determine if “Vibrations” should be made a co- or pre-requisite to“Dynamic Systems and Control”. This could help students to better understand and learnthe more challenging “Dynamic Systems and Control” course. In both courses Matlab isextensively used as simulation tool. “Vibrations” also includes two or three hands onexperimental laboratories where students measure the behavior of single degree and twodegrees of freedom systems. The paper will describe the assessment tools used in eachcourse, provide a comparative analysis of student performance over the past few years,and conclude with recommendations and future plans.