New trends in control engineering education

Conventional lectures and laboratory courses show limitations in representing networks of complex dynamic subjects. Examples, methods and tools cannot be visualised or tested by the student sufficiently in this environment. First of all, this contribution discusses different ways in using the World Wide Web for control engineering education. Then in the main part about a software pilot project is reported. Both theoretical reflection and visual feedback, also together with practical experience are important aspects in control engineering instruction, which is supported by the Virtual Control Lab (VCLab) system developed during this project. The Web based hypertext technique is combined with tools for computer-aided control system design. The VCLab approach integrates plugins and Java applets which use the powerful computational engine of MATLAB/SIMULINK to do extensive simulations and real interactive animation of control engineering experiments driven by local or Web wide information.