A support tool for teaching grafcet : engineering students' perceptions

Modeling discrete event systems with sequential behavior can be a very hard and complex task. Some formalisms are used in this context, such as: Petri Nets, Statecharts, Finite automata, Grafcet and others. Among these, Grafcet seems to be a good choice because it is easy: to learn, to understand an...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autor principal: Leão, Celina Pinto (author)
Outros Autores: Soares, Filomena (author), Machado, José Mendes (author), Oliveira, P. B. de Moura (author), Cunha, J. Boaventura (author)
Formato: conferencePaper
Idioma:eng
Publicado em: 2012
Assuntos:
Texto completo:http://hdl.handle.net/1822/16337
País:Portugal
Oai:oai:repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt:1822/16337
Descrição
Resumo:Modeling discrete event systems with sequential behavior can be a very hard and complex task. Some formalisms are used in this context, such as: Petri Nets, Statecharts, Finite automata, Grafcet and others. Among these, Grafcet seems to be a good choice because it is easy: to learn, to understand and to use. Teaching Grafcet is then relevant within engineering courses concerned with Industrial Automation. A virtual laboratory, e-GRAFCET, developed and first tested in UTAD University; it is a new, easy-to-use multimedia e-educational tool to support the self-learning process of Grafcet. This paper, reports a study of e-GRAFCET use by the students of University of Minho. A questionnaire was prepared and students asked to fulfill it in a volunteer basis. The results were statistically analyzed and the scores compared. The overall objective is to understand how the tool helps students in their study, and consequently improve their learning off Grafcet, independently of their engineering background.