1. Building Comfort With MATLAB
Wendy Thomas
Associate Professor of Bioengineering
University of Washington

2. My Teaching Experience
Bioen 201 (2008 – 2010) sophomore core: intro to mathematical programming (5 weeks) and circuits (5 weeks)
Bioen 485/585 (2004 – 2016) senior + graduate elective: computational differential equation modeling for bioengineering
Bioen 503 (2010 – 2013) graduate core: systems bioengineering (analytic and computational systems models)
Disclaimer: All my classes teach scientific computing in disciplinary context, not disciplinary content enhanced by computing

3. Keys to Building Comfort With MATLAB
SOFTWARE SUPPORT
hands-on support in front of the computer (lab, class or office hours with laptops or in computer lab)
Peer tutoring/workshops are great!
tutorials (linked online or made just for the course, but should get student from ground zero to the first assignment)
Practice

4. Keys to Building Comfort With MATLAB
Each activity requires:
MOTIVATION
Task should be easier to perform in MATLAB than in common alternatives (calculator, EXCEL), even at this stage of experience.
Task should relate to something of value (course content or common experiences)
LIMITED LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Identify a limited set of computing concepts and MATLAB tools that are easy to learn at this stage of experience
Don’t let students spend hours on something unrelated to the objectives. Jump start by providing needed resources such as:
Pseudo-code activity to help design algorithm
sample commented code for related problem
Tutorial-like part 1 followed by independent part 2

5. Comfort With What? Key scientific computing skills:
INTRODUCTORY SKILLS:
Arrays & algebra
Scripts & functions,
Plots
Flow control
Basic input/output
Intermediate Skills:
Use documentation to learn new skills
Debugging
More input and output
common functions: fminsearch, ODEs, statistics, visualization tools, etc,
Advanced skills:
Algorithm design
Data structures (e.g. Structures(1).awesome)
GUI design
Advanced visualization tools
Reliability tools (version control, visual checks of analysis, etc.)
One lesson
One course
While I use many of these in my research, I have not taught them

6. Set Expectations Designing algorithms … Debugging
Test hypotheses to divide and conquer
Much more efficient than experiments to teach logic
Move from cook book labs to independent thinking

7. Lesson 1
Motivation:
MATLAB is easier and more reliable for moderately complex calculations and for plotting functions.
Learning Objectives:
command line and scripts
Simple syntax
Arrays
Plot command
Maybe: Input (load)
Activity examples:
plot how an algebraic expression changes with one or more parameter values to explore an equation from class
Plot and analyze data from a wet lab
Plot and analyze a provided data set

8. Lesson 2 Motivation: MATLAB helps with data analysis
Learning Objectives:
Input and output data
Flow control
Look up and call functions
Activity
Process long data set obtained in a lab to make calculations.
Long time series data are great for this.
My class: calculate viscoelastic properties of material from repeated stress cycle data.

9. Lesson 3
Motivation:
MATLAB provides flexible fitting of models to data
Learning Objectives:
Write functions
fminsearch
Activity
Test hypotheses to relate experimental data to concepts in class.
My class: drug delivery nanoparticles