Abstract:

The Bologna process has motivated the basements of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The EHEA constitutes a compatible and coherent educational system for the higher education in Europe. However, in addition to the organization of the educational system, the EHEA also implies a sensitive change in the conception of the teaching-learning procedures which are based on the so-called “student centred learning”. In this new scheme, the development of individual learning skills is highly promoted. For this reason, novel tools allowing the students to carry out grouping and individual learning activities are required. In this sense, computing tools are very useful.

Among these tools, virtual platforms, for instance the free software called Moodle, are remarkable since constitute an appropriate framework to implement this new University teaching-learning purpose. With them, subject activities and/or educational material are integrated in a single environment without the need of a physical presence of students and teachers, developing the concept of “e-learning”.

Specifically in the case of Engineering degrees, other important computing tool is the mathematical software Matlab which allows matrix calculus, data and function representation and the implementation of algorithms. Therefore, it is also a very useful tool in solving engineering problems requiring complex equations or involving several iterations.
In consequence, the relationship between Moodle and Matlab can be very helpful from the point of view of both, teacher and student.

Therefore, the aim of this work is to improve the limited capability of the educational virtual platform Moodle, currently used in the University of Castilla – La Mancha, to implement quizzes related to engineering problems. The current quizzes are useless for complicated engineering problems requiring matrix calculation and differential equations. Because of this, the method proposed the use of the Matlab software tool to generate them in XML format to be imported from Moodle. In addition, these news quizzes give the students a feedback in the learning process.

In order to check the benefits of the method, the e-learning procedure has been implemented in a subject of the Electrical Engineering Degree currently running in the Industrial Engineering School of Toledo (University of Castilla – La Mancha) and the results are shown.

Keywords:

e-learning, Matlab, Moodle.