Development and evaluation of simple numerical methods learning software

GOÑI, SANDRO MAURICIO

Buenos Aires

Congreso; WCCE11 - 11th World Congress of Chemical Engineering; 2023

Asociación Argentina de Ingenieros Químicos

The use of interactive software in education can help students to improve understanding the behavior of different topics addressed, like numerical methods ([1]). Such topic is common for several engineering discipline, so the aim of this work was to implement a set of simple and traditional numerical methods, in a general way, as graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in MATLAB. The software ([2]) is used in an undergraduate level course of Process Simulation in Chemical Engineering. Methods include (Fig. 1a): roots findings, quadrature, ordinary differential equations for initial value problems, linear and non-linear regression, regression of ordinary differential equations-based models, 1-D finite differences for partial differential equations. During the seminar, the GUIs can be used to answer questions quickly, easily, and graphically, about numerical method behavior and/or performance, and mainly about “what if?”, when condition, parameters or methods are changed. The GUIs use was not mandatory for the students. After course ended, a survey about different GUIs aspects was requested (not mandatory). The anonymous survey was performed using a web form; it consisted of 11 questions with predefined answers, in different formats: popups, checkbox, etc., and a free question about suggestions/general comments. Questions about design, utilization, usefulness, innovative, among others, were included in the survey (Fig. 1b). Along years GUIs and survey had some little modifications, which do not affect their operation.The survey had a low answers rate, since the GUIs use was not mandatory. Along the years of the survey, 2009-2019, about 11% student answered it. During years 2020-2022 the GUIs were also employed, but the course development was different due to the COVID pandemic, so the described survey was not done. The results of the survey are very promising and favorable to the GUIs. This is attributed to the high intuitive use of the GUIs, to the tooltips, help, warnings and errors message provided by the software; on the other hand, it is easily to setup any related problem, of the course or the other courses.