Engineering education e-assessment with Matlab: case study in electronic design

This paper describes a Matlab-generated application for e-assessment in an introductory analog electronic design course. The application consists of two separate Matlab GUI interfaces: student GUI and instructor GUI. Students are asked to design a transistor amplifier and provide their answers through their GUI. The instructor, using the other side of the application, can automatically evaluate the student answers both qualitatively and quantitatively. The instructor's GUI assesses the student designs by automatically evaluating the 3-dB cutoff frequency and the gain and generating the corresponding Bode plots. Measures are taken to ensure that the students will really evaluate the circuit and won't try to guess values.