REINFORCING LEARNING IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION BY ALTERNATING BETWEEN THEORY, SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTS

Traditional engineering education has relied on teaching theoretical fundamentals, reinforced in some courses by laboratory experiments. However, for practical reasons experiments are limited in the scope, and many students fail to make the necessary connections between the theory and its applications. To bridge the gap between theory and applications we use the tools of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE). The hands-on use of simulation tools such as CAD, FEA or Motion Analysis helps students visualize and understand the application of theory to real engineering problems and allows students to model and simulate much more complex problems than are amenable to hand calculations. At the same time, the use of commercial simulation software provides students with skills that are in high demand in the market place.