Development of example-tracing tutors for teaching control systems performance fundamentals

Control systems performance is one the major subtopics taught in Automatic Control Systems introductory courses. Example-tracing tutors, a novel type of intelligent tutoring system (ITS), have been created in order to support the learning experience of mechatronics engineering students. A scoring system based on very well supported ITS design guidelines have led to the selection and successful prioritization of a relevant and general set of top ranked problems taken from a large initial problem space that was created by an exhaustive revision on imparted material in previous classes. Experiences on the advanced usage of the authoring tool and discussion about development issues are provided.