Resumen de Impact of flight simulators on teaching and learning simulink in an aerospace engineering course

Jaime Cifuentes Rodríguez, Ramón Ángel Fernández Díaz, Manuel Castejón Limas, Javier Alfonso Cendón

• This paper presents the results of investigating two teaching approaches to students studying a course on NumericalSimulation in Aerospace Engineering. In one approach a group of students used Simulink only and in the second anothergroup used Simulink and a physical flight simulator. The impact on students’ motivation and academic achievement wasassessed by the use of hierarchical clustering and linear discriminant analysis. There were 42 undergraduate students splitinto two groups. The conclusion is that by using a flight simulator students enjoy to a larger extent the learning process andthus are more motivated and eventually obtain better marks.