Impact of Simulation-Based Teaching in the Development of Students' Exploration and Learning Skills

Abstract :Students in higher education, learn many courses in their curriculum, especially in various engineering streams. Not all the courses in the curriculum are accompanied by physical laboratories to have practical exposure. Some of the courses are restricted only to theory content. In this context, simulation-based teaching and learning make such courses more interesting and enhance student learning and interaction in classrooms even in online or offline teaching. For the courses that are supported by simulation software, the facilitator or instructor can apply the simulation-based training techniques, tools, and strategies in designing well-defined learning capabilities. As a part of the study, simulation-based teaching and learning was tested in delivering two courses online. One of them is a third-year course “Antennas and Propagation” wherein the “Antenna Designer” application in Matrix Laboratory (MATLAB) environment was used to ensure the students learn the performance of an antenna, based on various design parameters and the other one is a second-year course “Electronic Circuit Analysis” wherein “Multisim Live online simulator” was used for designing and analyzing the circuits. The participation and engagement of around 65 learners each year were examined by the way they performed the complete design and analysis in the respective courses. The student's performance was assessed based on the clear demonstration of design and analysis they performed. This experiment found that about 80% of students benefitted from the experiment in terms of what they learned and how well they could do analysis, in both courses. This method of simulation-based learning embedded with the instructional design helped the students enhance their exploration skills and hence supported learning new concepts. Keywords : Student Engagement, Simulation-Based Le arning, Shor t Demonst ra tions, Student Assessment, MATLAB, Multisim.