Enabling Teachers and Students in SimulationBased Learning Environments

Enabling Teachers and Students in Simulation-Based Learning Environments Anne Rose and Gary W. Rubloff OVERVIEW v Simulation environments are powerful learning tools • “learn by doing” • cost effective training mechanisms v Generic simulation engines (e. g. , Vis. Sim. TM) are very flexible but most require significant training • Realistic models are very complex v Sim. PLE is an authoring tool for creating simulationbased learning environments • Simulated Processes in a Learning Environment • Couples power + flexibility of a generic simulation engine with a custom front end • Modules created with Sim. PLE include guidance material and other learning aids SIMPLE SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE ENABLING STUDENTS TO … ENABLING TEACHERS TO … EXPLORE AUTHOR Operate system Students can interact with the system (e. g. , open/close valves) and view the effects on system behavior in real-time. Create guidance material Teachers can include custom links in their guidance material that highlight system objects, run tutorials, and load histories. Hydrology Review, revise and replay operation A history of the system behavior is recorded each time the simulation is run. Students can use this history to review (replay) behavior and to revise the order of events and see what results. Create tutorials Teachers can annotate and edit recorded histories for use as tutorials. When replayed by students, annotations popup that describe tutorial behavior. v Allows independent contribution of education content and software development For studying the hydrology of the Nile River basin EDUCATIONAL CONTENT Simulation Engine Graphical User Interface Dialog (DLL) (Vis. Sim. TM) Guidance Material Semiconductor Manufacturing EXPERIMENT Perform structured experiments Students can run an experiment by iterating design parameters over a recipe of actions. The results include a summary file plus a history for each iteration. Analyze results Students can use tools like Spotfire to analyze the results where each dot represents a history. Specify access to system design parameters Teachers can indicate which system design parameters students can see and whether or not they can be modified and their default values. Used for understanding the film deposition process Control Systems (Delphi) (HTML) Author: Programmer Transportation Teaches the rudiments of traffic management v Separates users interface from simulation engine SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ADDITIONAL SYSTEMS Author: Teacher Demos and additional information available on the CELS web site: www. isr. umd. edu/~rubloff/cels SHARE/COLLABORATE Students can share their findings/results with peers and mentors through annotated histories. A tank simulation for use in an introductory engineering course on control systems