Trends in Control and Measurement Education

Book excerpt: This volume is the published Proceedings of selected papers from the IFAC Symposium, Swansea, 11-13 July 1988, where a forum was provided for discussion of the latest advances and techniques in the education of control and instrument engineers. Seven major topics were covered to aid lecturers in understanding, developing and presenting systems engineering - control and measurement - as a subject to undergraduate and postgraduate students. The teaching of real-time computer control as a topic and laboratory experiments for both continuous and discrete systems were discussed, as was process control, with the emphasis on providing the student with engineering experience by using scaled-down equipment which would teach practical skills. Included in the Proceedings are papers on measurement and instrumentation, an area felt to be neglected within academic instruction. The development of software tools for systems design within systems engineering was included, as was the exchange of teaching packages and methods between academics, and the education curriculum of systems engineering within developing countries. These Proceedings will prove to be a useful up-to-date guide and reference source for all lecturers and professors involved in curriculum development and the teaching of control and measurement in systems engineering.