Electronic Matlab exam based on student reports

Experience from a course in Offshore Wind Energy

Henrik Bredmose, DTU Wind Energy, hbre@dtu.dk

Introduction

Offshore Wind Energy is a 5ECTS master level course at DTU Wind Energy. It ran for
the first time in the fall of 2011 with 20 students. The course is evaluated through
three reports where the students work in pairs of two and an electronic Matlab based
exam. The exam counts roughly 50% of the total grade. In this talk, the motivation,
practicalities and experience with this evaluation form is presented and discussed.

Constructive alignment and the purpose of the exam

The course consists of three core topics of three weeks length

Substructures and wave loads

Aerodynamic wake effects
Floating wind turbines

plus four one-week guest modules on advanced topics. The three reports makes out
the evaluation of each core topic and concern typical engineering tasks for practical
design. The reports are focused around development of tools/sub-programs which can
contribute to the students toolbox after the course. For example a routine for
calculation of wave loads on a monopile foundation and a routine for the prediction of
production loss when one wind turbine is in the wake of another.

The reports constitute a constructive alignment of the learning and evaluation. During
the course, interaction among the students is encouraged. The more the students
cross-check their results and talk to each other, the deeper the learning and the better
the quality of their programs. In this process, however, some students take the short
cut of relying on their partners skills or getting so extensive help that they are not fully
aware of the details of the programs developed and applied.

For this reason the evaluation is supplemented by an electronic exam. The exam
problems are tweaked versions of the problems already solved in the reports. Hereby
the students are tested for their ability to re-apply and modify the programs they have
developed during the course. The exam is made individually.

While the individual exam is a check of each students individual ability and prevents
free-riders to easily pass the course, it is also meant to stimulate the learning
motivation through the course. The awareness of the written exam motivates the
students to be on top of their codes and to correct any mistakes, once the reports are
returned with corrections.

Practicalities

The exam makes use of Matlab. Due to license restrictions it be carried out in a DTU
data bar where Matlab is installed on the computers. The exam questions are posed on
CampusNet at the start of the exam and the answers are uploaded in pdf format to
CampusNet at the end of the exam. No other external network traffic is allowed. This is
to avoid exchange of program parts and interaction between the students. During the
exam the network traffic was monitored. The IT support was very helpful in this.
Results and experience

The raw score of the three reports and the exam is shown in the below figure.
16

14

12
Number of students
10

8
Reports
6 Exam

0 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Score >=

It is clearly seen that the performance at the exam is generally weaker than for the
three reports. This was a surprise and can be interpreted in two ways. Either the
students are less prepared and less on top of the full curriculum when they work
individually or the exam set was too ambitious. This is discussed below.

Summary and discussion

The combination of written reports and an electronic exam combines constructive

alignment with a test of the real skills needed after the course. The programs made
during the course are further of value for the students after the course.

The main problems experienced and the implemented solution in 2012 are as follows:

Performance is low due The previous exam set is provided and the students
to lack of time are encouraged to make a test exam during their
preparation.

Emphasize that the format and graphical quality is

not essential for the course grade.

The exam set is tested on the teaching assistant and

the extent is adjusted accordingly.
Performance is low due Provide previous exam set.
to weak Matlab skills
Performance is low due Provide previous exam set.
to lack of preparation
Access to internet To be taken up with the central DTU IT administration.
(download only) would
be useful

In summary the exam found is found to be appropriate for the course. The main
problem of a weaker performance than expected will be solved by a clearer
information on the exam form as described in the table. This will act to further
stimulate the students involvement during the course.