Asee peer logo

GIFTS - Integrating MATLAB Grader into an Engineering Computing Course

Download Paper |

Conference

15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE)

Location

Boston, Massachusetts

Publication Date

July 28, 2024

Start Date

July 28, 2024

End Date

July 30, 2024

Page Count

2

DOI

10.18260/1-2--48609

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/48609

Download Count

54

Paper Authors

biography

Andrew Charles Bartolini University of Notre Dame

visit author page

Director, First-Year Engineering Program, University of Notre Dame
Associate Teaching Professor, University of Notre Dame

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

This GIFTS (Great Ideas for Teaching Students) paper discusses the implementation of MATLAB Grader into a first-year engineering computing course. MATLAB Grader is an automatic grading platform for MATLAB files that is offered by MATHWORKS. MATLAB Grader allows students to submit code that is assessed through a variety of instructor created tests. The student submissions can be specified to be in the form of a user-defined function or a script. The tests typically check the values of variables, inclusion of keywords or functions, the absence of keywords or functions, or custom code with assessments created by the instructor.

MATLAB Grader was introduced into an engineering computing course at a medium-sized, private, Midwestern, residential university in the Spring 2023 and has been used again in the Spring 2024 semester. MATLAB Grader has been utilized to replace smaller active learning activity assignments. These assignments are started before the end of a given lecture and completed before the start of the next lecture. The assignments are a means to promote retrieval learning and ensure that the concepts from the previous lecture are reinforced before the next lecture. MATLAB Grader is used for problems including variable assignment, mathematical operations, loops, conditionals, data structures, cell arrays, user-defined functions, plotting, arrays, and vectors. MATLAB Grader was not used to replace the longer homework assignments.

The study will include feedback from students about their thoughts and opinions of using MATLAB Grader instead of the alternative method of submitting the files that were then hand graded within a week’s time period by teaching assistant graders. The paper will also outline opinions of the teaching assistant graders on their observations of using MATLAB grader from a grading perspective.

Bartolini, A. C. (2024, July), GIFTS - Integrating MATLAB Grader into an Engineering Computing Course Paper presented at 15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE), Boston, Massachusetts. 10.18260/1-2--48609

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2024 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015