2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In this paper, the authors document their experiences implementing MATLAB Grader in several mechanical engineering courses spanning from 1st year core courses to 4th year electives at a primarily undergraduate institution (PUI). MATLAB Grader is an online browser-based version of MATLAB where instructors can create, share, and automatically assess MATLAB exercises with their students. The sustained effort by the authors to incorporate MATLAB Grader in their courses was motivated by an intent to help students develop an analytical mindset so that they can ultimately successfully engage in more realistic design-type problems. MATLAB Grader facilitated this goal by presenting students with opportunities to analyze trends with parametric variations as opposed to focusing on a single answer for one set of conditions. In addition, problems can also be scaffolded so that students receive instantaneous feedback on intermediate stages of a complex problem. Furthermore, the authors have often grappled with how to best grade programming-based assignments. MATLAB Grader is an excellent platform that addresses these objectives and desires.

This work is unique in that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the use of MATLAB grader in mechanical engineering courses is not well-documented. There is more evidence of its use in the electrical/computer engineering discipline, but evidence of its use in mechanical engineering is more limited. As a result, this paper represents an effort to share the pedagogical and practical benefits as well as the challenges and drawbacks of using this platform. Based on their experiences, the authors also seek to share guidelines that they have developed for instructors considering the use of MATLAB Grader in their mechanical engineering courses. These guidelines are tailored to the cohort of students i.e. 1st year, 2nd year, etc. as well as the type of course taught i.e. programming course versus a problem-solving course like statics/dynamics versus a numerical methods course such as finite element methods.