Description

Introduction:

Having previously conducted two successful workshops on MATLAB, this year IMechE NPSC decided to take this to the next level by conducting a week-long short course on MATLAB. MATLAB is a mathematical tool having a wide range of practical applications especially in the field of science and engineering. By conducting this course, we aimed to provide engineering students with an opportunity to level up their technical skills and stand out from the competition.

Pre-Event Details:

The idea to conduct such an event was put forward early this semester and the team started working on it in the first week of March. A three-week plan was designed to conduct this event successfully. The team was divided into further sub-teams with each team assigned specific tasks such as marketing, designing course outline, conducting internal and external drives.

a) Marketing

The marketing team put all their efforts to pull off a successful marketing campaign. A number of posters were designed and circulated on social media platforms and in different universities. The team informed leading A-level colleges of Karachi of this event via e-mail and asked them to encourage participation from their students. The team conducted external drives in several renowned engineering as well as non-engineering universities of Karachi such as NEDUET, Karachi University, Bahria University, IBA.

b) Instructor

Dr. Asim Khwaja, a leading faculty member at NUST-PNEC, was selected as the course-instructor.Dr. Asim is a software developer, researcher and an educationist. He has more than five years of industry experience working as a professional software developer in Pakistan, USA, and Australia and more than eight years of teaching and research experience in international universities.He has a passion of teaching and likes to incorporate innovative ideas and technologies into his teaching methods.An accomplished MATLAB expert, he has previously conducted two very successful workshops on MATLAB for IMechE-NPSC.

c) Course Outline

A meeting was conducted with the instructor to design the course outline. Senior members of the team put forth their ideas on what should be part of the course. The course was carefully planned to be suitable for students of both engineering and non-engineering backgrounds and for students with no prior experience and knowledge on MATLAB.

Event Details:

a) Sessions

The course was conducted in the second week of April from 7^thto 14^thof April. The course was held in the form of 11 sessions, one session every week day and two session every weekend, with each session lasting 3 hours. The classes were conducted at CSD-Lab of NUST-PNEC. A total of 8 participants from different universities enrolled for the course. The instructor taught the course with full energy and enthusiasm. Queries of each participant were dealt with individually by the instructor. The instructor also conducted short quizzes and an end-of-course test to allow participants to put the knowledge that they gained to test. Lunch was provided to the students on weekends by IMechE-NPSC.

b) Certificate Distribution Ceremony

在课程的最后一天,一个年代hort certificate-distribution ceremony was held. All the participants were provided with certificates attesting to the skills they had learned. The team members of IMechE-NPSC were also provided with certificates of volunteer ship to acknowledge the contributions that they made to bring about this event.

Outcome and Response:

The event ended with satisfaction for all; participants, instructor and the team members. The participants showed full contentment with the course, appreciated the teaching skills of instructor and showed their interest in participating in more of such events conducted by IMechE-NPSC. The instructor too appreciated the team’s efforts and expressed his good wishes for the team’s future endeavors. The team members ended up with more experience of collaboration and team work. The newly-recruited members of the team had a lot to learn from the seniors.

Written By:Ms. Iqra Irshad(NUST PNEC)