Paper ID #37645

Employing Live Scripts for Implementing Virtual Laboratories and

Activities
Dr. Rick Hill, University of Detroit, Mercy
Dr. Richard Hill is a Professor and Assistant Dean in the College of Engineering & Science at Univer-
sity of Detroit Mercy. Dr. Hill received a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of
Southern California in 1998, and an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cal-
ifornia, Berkeley in 2000. He joined the faculty of Detroit Mercy in 2008 after receiving a Ph.D. degree
in Mechanical Engineering and an M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor. His research interests lie in the areas of vehicle control, control and diagnosis of discrete-
event systems, modular and hierarchical control, and engineering education. Dr. Hill also has a strong
interest in diversifying the STEM pipeline and leads the innovating Detroit’s Robotics Agile Workforce
(iDRAW) program in partnership with underserved Detroit-area high schools.

©American Society for Engineering Education, 2023

 Employing live scripts for implementing virtual laboratories and
activities
Richard Hill
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Detroit Mercy

Abstract

Significant research exists demonstrating the benefits of active and inquiry-based instruction for
student engagement, learning, and knowledge retention. The emergence of ever improving
software tools provide instructors valuable resources for developing virtual activities to be used
within lecture courses, or in place of physical laboratory experiments. This paper describes the
use of the MATLAB Live Editor for creating interactive live scripts. These live scripts combine
code, formatted text, graphics, and live controls such as numeric sliders, buttons, and drop-down
lists, for the creation of lectures and virtual activities that illustrate complex topics through
interactive figures and animations. When deployed as in-class activities for students and as
interactive homework assignments, students are able to build intuition for course material and
construct meaning for themselves. This paper provides techniques and examples for developing
and employing live scripts for teaching a range of topics from mathematics, engineering, and
science. The author has piloted these techniques in online and in-person courses related to
modeling and control over the past two years at University of Detroit Mercy. Student survey data
from the winter 2023 semester indicates students found significant value from the live script
activities implemented in their course.

Keywords

Active learning, inquiry-based pedagogy, virtual laboratories

Introduction

Learning advanced topics in engineering, mathematics, and science can be challenging for even
the best students. Even students who excel academically and can get the “right” answer and
repeat back the material they have been presented often lack a deep understanding of the topics
they are learning. These challenges arise because many concepts in these fields are abstract; they
aren’t physical and can’t be touched or observed directly. Furthermore, students are faced with
covering a lot of material over a range of courses, all of which are competing for their time and
attention.

Traditionally, courses in these fields have been taught via passive lecture. Lecture has its
advantages in that it is quite efficient as a means for disseminating information in a clean,
summarized format. The problem with lecture is that students often don’t build their own
understanding of the material which limits their retention and ability to apply the information. It
is also unlikely a student can maintain their focus for much of a typical 50- to 75-minute lecture.
Another drawback of lecture is that a student often doesn’t discover any gaps in understanding
until they go to apply the material, typically while doing their homework, at which point the
instructor is no longer available to answer their questions.

Active learning techniques can help address some of these deficiencies as recognized by a range
of studies, while ultimately leading to improved student performance [1] [2] [3]. A traditional
form of active learning in engineering and science curricula has come in the form of physical
experiments [4] [5]. Often these activities take place in a dedicated lab section since the
experiments can take significant time to set up and conduct, may require considerable space, and
can be messy or dangerous. The use of virtual activities can help to overcome these limitations,
in addition to avoiding the cost of the physical equipment, while affording many of the same
benefits. There can even be advantages to virtual labs in that students can easily pause and replay
an activity, in addition to having more space to reflect since they don’t have to focus on
procedural skills to the same degree [6]. Virtual labs have been implemented, for example, using
a range of numerical simulation tools [7] [8]. A potential challenge of using simulation is that the
interface might not be straightforward and it can require additional instructional time to
introduce students to the use of the software tools for running the simulations. Work has also
been done to create interactive applets and animations for conducting virtual experiments such as
PHET [9]. These virtual activities can be very easy for students to use, but their creation may
require specialized tools and knowledge which most instructors don’t have. In that case,
instructors can use materials created by others, but if the virtual activities don’t exactly meet
their specific needs, they are unable to adapt the resources.

In this work, the use of the MATLAB Live Editor for the creation of virtual activities is explained.
This tool requires some knowledge of MATLAB, but the learning curve is not too high and
many engineering and mathematics faculty are already proficient in the software. The resulting
live scripts are very easy for students to use and interact with, even if they don’t themselves
know how to program in MATLAB. Furthermore, the resulting live scripts are open and can be
readily shared with and adapted by other faculty.

In the remainder of this paper, the MATLAB Live Editor is introduced and then a series of
implementation examples are described that could be applied to a variety of courses in
engineering, mathematics, and the sciences. The paper then concludes with some tips on how to
integrate virtual activities into one’s courses, including results from the author’s experience
piloting activities in their own courses at University of Detroit Mercy.

The MATLAB Live Editor

An example live script created with the MATLAB Live Editor is shown in Figure 1. The Live
Editor environment is similar to any modern word processing software such as Microsoft Word
or Google Docs. The live script can readily include formatted text, headings, hyperlinks,
equations, and figures. What distinguishes live scripts is the ability to run MATLAB code and
include live controls that allow the user to interact with the document. For example, the user can
change the value of a variable or a setting and observe figures and animations react in real time.
The live script depicted in Figure 1 includes a Numeric Slider which allows the continuous
adjustment of the variable Kp (in this case, a proportional control gain). Upon adjustment of the
slider, the associated MATLAB code is set to run automatically and update the figure produced
by the code. This interface is very easy for students to interact with and requires almost no
additional instructional overhead. In this example, the MATLAB code is visible to the user
which could be instructive if a related goal is to teach MATLAB programming. However, if the
code obfuscates the learning goal, it can be hidden. Furthermore, the output of the code can be
included inline within the document as it is here, or if it is preferred, the output can be shown to
the right of the live script document.

Figure 1 Example live script created with the MATLAB Live Editor

Other live controls that allow a variable to be changed “continuously” are the Numeric Spinner
and Edit Field controls. With both the numerical slider and spinner, you specify the range of
values available as well as the step size that can be taken in making a selection between the
minimum and maximum values. With the slider, the specific value is chosen by moving the
slider, while with the spinner there is an up arrow and a down arrow that allows the user to step
between the available values. Alternatively, there is an Edit Field control where the user can
directly type in the desired variable value, without being limited to the discrete steps available
with the slider.

A fundamentally different live control is the Drop Down control. This control configures a menu
to be specified that allows the user to choose between discrete options or settings. For example, a
user could choose between fundamentally different mathematical functions or models that aren’t
simple scalar values. The final two live controls are Boolean in nature, the Button and Check
Box. These two options essentially control whether a piece of code runs or not. For example, a
button launches a specified section of code to run when clicked, while the check box can be
configured to either cause a piece of code to be run when checked, or to alternatively inhibit a
piece of code from running. Examples of how these controls might be used include to show or
hide the solution from a student, or to refresh a figure.

The Live Editor also includes Live Tasks which are comprehensive, interactive applications for
conducting a variety of analysis and processing tasks. Figure 2 shows a depiction of the
MATLAB Live Editor environment with the live tasks drop-down menu open.

Figure 2 Depiction of the MATLAB Live Editor environment

Implementation Examples

In this section, several implementation examples are described to illustrate the functionality of
the MATLAB Live Editor while providing examples of how it can be used across a range of
science, engineering, and mathematics courses. Many of the examples that will be presented here
can be accessed from the website: https://www.mathworks.com/campaigns/products/control-
tutorials.html
Connecting Math to the Physical World

Many students have learned mathematics by memorizing abstract procedures and facts. This
approach doesn’t promote deep understanding and can limit the students’ ability to retain the
information as well as their ability to apply the concepts in different contexts. Visualizing
mathematical equations in terms of their graphical representations can help students to build
understanding. The emergence of graphing calculators and software such as the base MATLAB,
Mathematica, Desmos, and GeoGebra have proven to be powerful tools for helping students to
visualize mathematical concepts. However, sometimes students can be challenged in setting up
an investigation in terms of how to input the mathematical relationships, how to formulate the
graphical output, and how to make the appropriate changes to highlight the concept an instructor
may wish for them to recognize. By building a custom live script, the instructor can remove
much of the mental overhead required by the student to set up the investigation so that they can
focus on interpreting the result. For example, the instructor can set up the mathematical structure
with specific elements constrained, while leaving other elements free, and can format the scales,
colors, and labels of the outputs for the students.

Some simple examples of how to employ the Live Editor for developing mathematical
understanding is to employ numeric sliders to modify the parameters of an equation and observe
the impact on the graph of the resulting function. For example, to see the effect on the amplitude,
frequency, and phase of a sinusoidal function, or the effect of coefficients on the shape of a
surface in three dimensions. The live script shown in Figure 3 includes sliders for changing the
real and imaginary part of complex conjugate poles of an underdamped second-order system
(same as changing the roots of the characteristic equation of a second-order differential
equation). The generated figures are shown to the right of the live script (as opposed to inline)
and include one plot showing the locations of the poles in the complex plane and a second plot
showing the output response of the system for a step input. The annotations on the two figures
are added by the custom functions displayPoles and displayCharacteristics which
are defined at the end of the live script (not shown).

Figure 3 Live script with sliders for visualizing mathematics

A related live script that employs drop down controls is shown in Figure 4. In this case, the first
drop down menu allows the user to select between distinct linear systems such as a 1st Order
System, an Underdamped 2nd Order System, etc. (with some initial conditions included). In this
case, the systems are configured within the drop-down control in terms of the matrices of their
associated state space representation (A, B, C, D) and the initial value of the state vector (x0).
The second drop-down menu then allows the user to select between different forcing inputs to
the previously chosen system model. Plots of the resulting free and forced response of the chosen
system and forcing function are then displayed to the right.

Figure 4 Live script with drop-down menus for visualizing mathematics

The live script from which the images of Figure 3 and Figure 4 were taken can be downloaded
from the web site introduced at the beginning of this section 1.

Virtual Experiments

The live scripts presented so far allow students to “experiment” with the parameters of different
mathematical relationships. These mathematical relationships can represent physical systems and
hence can allow instructors to implement virtual laboratories allowing students to construct
meaning for themselves. The advantages of using live scripts in this capacity is that it eliminates
the expense of physical equipment, while reducing the required space and set up time so that the
experiments can be conducted in a regular classroom in the middle of lecture, during a
synchronous online class meeting, or even by students as part of their homework outside of class
time. Numerical simulation tools have been used to implement virtual lab activities in this
manner for quite some time. The advantage of live scripts is again that they reduce the mental
overhead for the students. With live scripts, the students don’t have to go into a model to change
parameters or structure, they don’t have to run distinct iterations of the simulation, or store and
format the output data in a way to highlight the concept being targeted. With a live script, the
controls are easy to interface with and the change in the output can be seen immediately in
exactly the manner the live script author intended.

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In addition to collecting and visualizing data, physical experiments can help students build
intuition through observation of motion, sound, and light, which can be quite visceral and can
connect with students in a manner that a trace on an x-y plot can’t. Such physical observations
can be emulated in virtual experiments by the inclusion of animation. Figure 5 depicts a live
script with an animation of a pendulum. In this case, the initial angle of the pendulum can be
varied and the resulting accuracy of a linear approximation of the nonlinear pendulum model can
be assessed by comparing the resulting outputs. The first time an animation is run for a new
parameter, it may run a bit slowly because of the associated computation. Live scripts, however,
include a play back function (shown at the bottom of the live script) that allows the animation to
run very quickly, even faster than real time, during subsequent replay.

Figure 5 Example live script with pendulum animation

One could envision developing a related live script where different aspects of the pendulum
could be altered and the resulting behavior observed. For example, the length of the pendulum,
the mass of the end bob, different amounts and types of friction, etc. One of the attractive aspects
of live scripts is that they are open and easy to adapt for instructors with even basic knowledge of
MATLAB. The live script presented in Figure 5 was adapted from a live script for a double
pendulum available on the MathWorks website 2. In general, the MATLAB Central File
Exchange provides a good forum for instructors and general users to share materials.

In addition to demonstrating theoretical concepts, another purpose of laboratories can be to teach

about implementation and dealing with real-world challenges. Even though virtual laboratories
are idealized, some aspects of implementation can be emulated. For example, a virtual
experiment with a motor can be built to include nonlinear friction, while noise can be added to
the data and the data can be sampled and quantized to emulate the measurement process. Figure
6 shows a portion of a live script for a virtual motor speed control laboratory. The virtual

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experiment emulates calculating motor speed based on integer counts of an encoder with noise
added and a finite sampling period. Earlier in the live script the user can experiment with the
sampling frequency, but in Figure 6, the user can change the time constant of a first-order low
pass filter to observe the tradeoff between amount of smoothness that is achieved in comparison
to how much lag the filter adds.

Figure 6 Live script of a virtual motor experiment

Building Intuition for Graphical Tools

Many fields of science and engineering employ graphical tools to assist with analysis and design.
This is particularly true for the modeling and control of dynamic systems, which is the field of
engineering in which the author has so far piloted the use of live scripts. For example, control
engineering relies on graphical tools such as the root locus, Bode plot, Nyquist plot, and Nichols
chart. The author’s experience has been that the step-by-step construction of these plots is
informative for the students’ understanding of what they represent and how they can be used, but
often students get bogged down in the process to the point that they lose their grasp of why the
plots are being created in the first place. The use of live scripts can leverage the built-in
functionality of MATLAB to create plots, while illuminating how the plots are generated and
what they represent.

For example, the live script shown in Figure 7 helps to illustrate the concept of frequency
response and how that information is represented by the Bode plot 3. In this live script, the user
can select an input frequency via the slider. The plot on the left includes the sinusoidal input to
the given system and the corresponding steady-state output (once the transient response has died

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out). This figure illustrates how the amplitude of the output sinusoid is scaled and shifted with
respect to the input. The Bode magnitude and phase plots for the given system are then shown in
the figure on the right. The black boxes on the plots correspond to the scaling of the output (top
plot) and phase shift (bottom plot) for that specific frequency of input. As the user adjusts the
frequency of the sinusoid input, the graphs on the left are updated and the boxes on the plots on
the right move in correspondence to the new frequency and resulting scaling and phase shift.

Figure 7 Live script illustrating the Bode plot

Developing Design Skills

The ability to design is an important skill for many engineers. Since the design process is often
iterative, it can be challenging for students in a course to have sufficient time to go through the
entire analysis and design process multiple times as they would as a professional engineer.
Leveraging software tools, such as MATLAB, can increase the speed with which students can
repeat multiple cycles. The use of live scripts can also help students with this process. The
example shown in Figure 8 illustrates a live script where a student can tune the three terms of a
PID controller and observe the impact on the system’s resulting response and hopefully achieve
any provided specifications 4. In this case, annotations have been added to the response graph
indicating that it is required that the Settling Time (ts) be less than 0.04 seconds and the
Maximum Percent Overshoot (Mp) be less than 16%. In a traditional controls course, often

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students perform their controller design for simple, linear systems for which they have a model
and can directly calculate the control gains to satisfy a given set of requirements. In practice, an
engineer will have a model with uncertainty (or no model at all) and the system will have
nonlinearities and complexity that prevents the theoretical design of a controller that guarantees a
given set of requirements will be met. Therefore, a professional controls engineer will often need
to tune their controller experimentally following the calculation of their initial design. Despite
this, many students don’t get practice tuning a controller under such conditions.

Figure 8 Controller design live script

The use of live scripts for iterative design can also assist with the gamification of assignments where
students can play against classmates or themselves to get the best score or to beat some objective.

Integrating into Instruction and Student Feedback

Live scripts, such as the examples described so far in this paper, can be employed in a course in a
number of ways to help improve student engagement and learning. In this section, some
suggestions are provided including tips based on the author’s piloting of activities in courses on
modeling and control over the past two years at University of Detroit Mercy. The author has
developed his use of live scripts based on observations and informal feedback from the students.
During his most recent winter 2023 semester course offering, the author conducted an
anonymous survey of the students. The course was an upper-division required undergraduate
course on modeling and control system design. There were 12 total respondents, all having
senior standing except for one junior. In terms of major, 10 were mechanical engineering
students and two were electrical engineering.

Instructors can employ live scripts in their lectures to demonstrate concepts; instead of
explaining a topic only in words, or by speaking to a static picture, instructors can “show” an
idea through an interactive graph or animation. A live script can replace an instructor’s lecture
slides where you can imagine a document being open within MATLAB with the instructor
scrolling through the live script as their lecture proceeds. Alternatively, an instructor can jump
back and forth between live scripts and their PowerPoint slides or work on a white board. If the
live scripts are made available, the students can also follow along with the demonstrations on
their own devices.

Instructors can also employ live scripts during class meetings as activities to engage students.
These activities can break up lecture to re-engage the attention of the students and can provide
opportunities for students to build a deeper understanding of the material. This requires at least
some of the students to have access to a computer device during class and the live scripts can be
distributed via an online course management system, or even via email or text. One option is to
conduct a course in a computer lab, though in the author’s experience sufficient numbers of
students bring laptops or tablets to class that working in a lab isn’t necessary if students team up
for activities. Students can also use their phones by launching the live scripts in the MATLAB
Mobile environment.

When integrating the virtual activities into class time, it is important to structure the class so that
the activities help the students achieve the desired outcomes. For example, the author has found
it helpful to provide the students a very direct question that they can try to answer as a result of
the activity, rather than asking something vague, such as, “what did you notice?”. The author
often polls the students with a multiple-choice question that is specific and provides immediate
feedback to the instructor about the level of the classes’ understanding. In an in-person class the
polling can be done by a show of hands, but can also use clickers or phone-based apps such as
from Top Hat or Poll Everywhere. Polling is also built into most online course delivery services
such as Zoom or Blackboard Collaborate. The polls help to promote all students engaging with
the activity, which can be especially challenging with online courses. These questions can then
be a jumping off point for class discussion or further clarifying instruction. For example, if there
is a split in the answers from the class, the instructor can ask the students to turn to their neighbor
and explain why they chose the answer they did. In online courses, students can be put into
breakout rooms for discussion or the activities themselves. A Peer Instruction approach to
teaching such as this has been shown to be quite effective for improving student learning [10]
[11].

In the author’s winter 2023 course offering, the students overall had a positive attitude toward
the use of live scripts in class. In response to the statement, “The live script activities were
helpful for my understanding,” all 12 students Agreed or Strongly Agreed. Employing a five-
point Likert scale ranging from 1 for Strongly Disagree to 5 for Strongly Agree, the average
response was 4.33. While for the statement, “The live script activities break up the monotony of
lecture,” the average student response was 3.92. The open-ended comments regarding the live
scripts were also positive. One student wrote, “I liked being able to view and modify the live-
plots in class. It really helped connect the math behind the plot to its various components.”
Regarding the Peer Instruction approach to live script use, another student commented,
“Particularly, I liked how we were given the opportunity to guess what would happen first. Then
the professor explained why the guesses were wrong or right after the system was shown in the
live script.”

One challenge with implementing activities during class is making time for the activities. Two
approaches to address this include to cut down on the amount of material covered in a course or
to displace some instruction to outside of class time via videos or pre-class readings. The author
has attempted to do both, though the process hasn’t been without its challenges. Specifically, in
their courses the author has removed some more advanced topics (such as a lecture on
linearization), has removed examples for less common systems (such as examples with non-
minimum phase systems), and has reduced some of the time spent on detailed mathematical
examples (fewer examples of partial fraction expansion, fewer detailed requirements in drawing
the root locus, etc.). The author has also replaced some lecture content with videos to be watched
outside of class. In one online graduate course, the author has completely flipped the course and
replaced all lecture with videos thereby allowing class time to be used for activities and
discussion. This is a large ask for the students, but it has worked well in this course because the
graduate students tend to be mature, working professionals who are taking the course because
they have a strong interest. In the author’s undergraduate winter 2023 course, the course wasn’t
flipped, but students were required to watch between 15 and 30 minutes of video per week to
free up a little more class time. For the statement, “It is worth watching videos outside of class to
make space for in-class activities and discussion,” the average student response was 3.42
(between Neutral and Agree). Two of the 12 students Disagreed with the statement, while five
students Agreed or Strongly Agreed. When asked how about the amount of time spent in class
employing live scripts, all 12 students responded that the time was About Right or they would
like A Bit More. Assigning the answer About Right a score of 3 and A Bit More a score of 4, the
average response was 3.58.

Live scripts can also be used for work outside of the classroom. For example, they can be used
for self-instruction and pre-class reading, like a living textbook. In this manner, live scripts can
include narrative like a text book, but can also have embedded activities and can provide
templates for students to input their own work. One approach is to include elements that the
students can choose to hide or show/run when they are ready to check their work. Setting up a
live script as an unfilled template can also allow live scripts to be used as homework
assignments.

Conclusion

This work has described the use of the MATLAB Live Editor for the creation of live scripts for
use as virtual activities and laboratories to improve student engagement and learning. Several
examples were provided and the author’s experience in piloting activities over the past two years
has been shared. The author plans to continue developing interactive materials for use in their
courses with a further goal to formally assess their impacts on student learning. In addition to the
website provided by the author sharing the live script activities they have developed, the
MathWorks website includes significant content explaining the functionality and implementation
of live scripts 5. Furthermore, the MATLAB Central File Exchange 6 is a valuable resource for
discovering live scripts that other users have created that can be readily adapted.

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[8] R. C. Hill, "The Effective Use of Simulation in the Introductory Controls Curriculum," in
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[9] C. E. Wieman, W. K. Adams and K. K. Perkins., "PhET: Simulations that enhance

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[10] C. H. Crouch and M. Eric, "Peer instruction: Ten years of experience and results,"
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