SIG meeting

IEEE Colloquium/workshop on Control Education and sharing education resources (also supported by HEA Engineering subject centre Special interest group in control education)

Wed 19th March at the University of Sheffield

There was broad range of talks covering the collection and use of real data from a small passenger aircraft, ideas for using MATLAB to help students learn better or to make more challenging and interesting assessments, the potential for web delivery of some laboratories, imaginative laboratories to grab students attention and enthusiasm and surveys to capture the desirable learning outcomes.

PROGRAMME

Using jet stream data to support modelling and simulation with MATLAB and simulink	Alastair Cooke a.cooke@Cranfield.ac.uk
Modelling the Eye-Brain-Hand Motor Response in Transfer Function form: An Active Learner Approach	Aidan O'Dwyer aidan.odwyer@dit.ie
Internet Based Real-time Control System Laboratory	Guoping Liu, Wenshan Hu, Senchun Chai and David Rees gplui@glam.ac.uk
Modelling Project at Reading	Dr Richard Mitchell r.j.mitchell@reading.ac.uk Dr Will Browne
Experiences at teaching advanced control at Reading using Matlab based computer assessment	Victor M. Becerra v.m.becerra@reading.ac.uk	More information
Bode plots, why bother?	Paul McKenna, p.mckenna@gcal.ac.uk
Using peer assessment and MATLAB within the control curriculum and for large groups	Anthony Rossiter j.a.rossiter@shef.ac.uk	See resources page for more.
Experiences of using MATLAB for teaching and assessment	Damian Giaouris, damian.giaouris@newcastle.ac.uk
Graduate Process Control Skill Requirements – Are we satisfying them?	Diane Rossiter, d.rossiter@shef.ac.uk	Associated files (in a zip file).
The special interest group on control education and its future (Discussion) - see below

Minutes of discussion

Academics present for discussion : Richard Mitchell, Victor Becerra, James Whidbourne, Alistair Cooke, Damian Giaouris, Paul McKenna, Anthony Rossiter, Crinela Pislaru, Dinae Rossiter, Hugo Alleyne. Also Aidan O'Dwyer ( Dublin )

Aims and objectives and earlier discussions already on website.
What next? How is initiative sustained? Who is in charge?
- Agreed to biennial meetings much like this colloquium which are relatively informal. In addition we should try to organise sessions at each UKACC conference.
- Maintain a presence on UKACC to ensure good dissemination to new staff and interaction as appropriate. Note the existence of Network for young staff in control, contacts (Henry Wu, Roger Goodall, Arygious).
A repository of resources with a summary of usage and related experience. How publicise to new staff? How manage?
- Agree that the website was useful and we should develop this. Request for more wiki type elements, opportunities to add comments on resources/weblinkes and also create general discussion threads (bloggs).
- Publicising this site was not discussed in any depth, but the possibility for a flyer (to distribute a major events) was mostly supported.
- Attendees agreed to consider, as appropriate, which resources they could contribute to the site. A particular request was made for case studies, especially with real data/scenarios.
- Joint projects to create resources? For now this was left for future discussion. There was no major initiative that attendees wanted to pursue, although they recognised potential for small HEA support.

ACTIONS

Richard Mitchell : Hoping to go to ICC and will contact organisers to discuss potential for running a session on control education.
Anthony Rossiter : Will talk to HEA subject centre about the sustainability, design and management of a website.
James Whidbourne and Liu Guoping : To be requested to consider making contributions to the control education session at the IFAC world congress.
Alistair Cooke : To consider provide data, models, loops and scenarios on their actual flight tests.
James has a file to randomise systems based on a username.
All: Provide real data or realistic scenarios.
Victor: To provide a short paragraph and link to his webpage resources.