Abstract:

Numerical methods are one of the subjects of education at technical universities. Knowledge of these methods allows the proper use of computational packages (Matlab, Maple, Mathematica, GNU Octave, etc.) and provides the necessary basis for self-solve complex engineering problems. However, this requires knowledge of the theoretical concepts of the methods used. Numerical methods course at universities in Poland is usually carried out using the traditional textbooks. Many years of author’s experience show that the spoken subject is treated as difficult and not liked by students. In order to support learning theory and programming of numerical methods, the authors have prepared an interactive application that simply explains and graphically illustrates the chosen algorithms. Another advantage is that the application has been prepared by students (two of article’s authors) for students. Cooperation between lecturer and students, right from the beginning, allows making such application more accurate.

The main aim of this article is to present the possibilities of interactive application supporting the educational process in the area of difficult numerical algorithms. Presentation is confined to the necessary elements of the theory, focusing on simple examples for illustrating the idea of a chosen method. The application has an intuitive graphical interface. The GUI application consists of four modules: educational, computing, testing knowledge and managing user account. Educational module helps to learn the theory and scheme of chosen numerical algorithms. The second module allows to apply the chosen numerical method to the prepared test data. Module testing students’ knowledge enables verification of skills and saving the results on their accounts. The last module allows the user to manage his account.

Keywords:

Educational software, numerical methods, lecturer and students cooperation.