An exploration of student mentoring to motivate and to enhance interactive learning in undergraduate engineering courses

Algunos de los objetivos establecidos por las directrices de la Universidad son la promoción de la tutoría entre pares, desarrollada principalmente entre estudiantes de cursos avanzados y estudiantes de primer año. Si bien es cierto que este tipo de experiencia se difunde ampliamente en las Facultades de Pedagogía y Psicología, su implementación limitada en las Escuelas de Ingeniería no es menos cierta. Esta comunicación describe la experiencia de tutoría que se ha llevado a cabo entre los estudiantes de pregrado de tercer y segundo año para mejorar los resultados académicos de los de segundo año en la asignatura de "Automatización", incluida en el programa del segundo curso de El Grado en Tecnología de Ingeniería Industrial, todo ello basado en la experiencia adquirida por los alumnos de tercer año. Para lograr este objetivo, los mentores de los estudiantes han utilizado herramientas en línea que ya podían manejar con habilidad, como MATLAB y SIMULINK, para el aprendizaje de conceptos fundamentales de la asignatura "Automatización". Para este propósito, han propuesto tareas de aprendizaje explicativas basadas en problemas sobre ejercicios tratados en clase, asesorando a sus compañeros supervisados ​​en la mejora de su propio aprendizaje y maximizando su potencial, para así obtener las competencias necesarias antes de la evaluación general. Los datos de una encuesta de estudiantes indican la opinión positiva de los estudiantes de pregrado sobre el proceso de tutoría. De hecho, la experiencia de la mentoría realizada ha llevado a una mejor adaptación del estudiante a la materia y le ha permitido al profesor conocer las dificultades en el manejo por parte de los estudiantes de las herramientas de aprendizaje en línea. También ha demostrado una mejora en las relaciones y la comunicación entre estudiantes y profesores gracias a la función de intermediación de los estudiantes mentores.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

System dynamics modelling in systems biology and applications in pharmacology

El modelado matemático de sistemas biológicos complejos es uno de los temas clave en la Biología de Sistemas y varios métodos computacionales basados ​​en la simulación computarizada han sido aplicados hasta ahora para determinar el comportamiento de los sistemas no lineales. La Dinamica de Sistemas es una metodología de modelado intuitivo basada en el razonamiento cualitativo por el cual un modelo conceptual se puede describir como un conjunto de relaciones de causa y efecto entre las variables de un sistema. A partir de esta estructura, es posible obtener un conjunto de ecuaciones dinámicas que describan cuantitativamente el comportamiento del sistema. Centrándose en los sistemas farmacológicos, el modelado compartimental a menudo se utiliza para resolver un amplio espectro de problemas relacionados con la distribución de materiales en los sistemas vivos en la investigación, el diagnóstico y la terapia en todo el cuerpo, los órganos y los niveles celulares. En este artículo presentamos la metodología de modelado de Dinámica del Sistema y su aplicación al modelado de un modelo compartimental farmacocinético-farmacodinámico del efecto de profundidad anestésica en pacientes sometidos a intervenciones quirúrgicas, derivando un modelo de simulación en el entorno de simulación orientada a objetos OpenModelica. La Dinamica de Sistemas se puede ver como una herramienta educativa poderosa y fácil de usar y en la enseñanza de Biología de Sistemas.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

System Dynamics Modelling in Systems Biology and Applications in Pharmacology

Mathematical modelling of complex biological systems is one of the key issues in System Biology and several computational methods based on computer simulation have been applied up to now to determine the behaviour of nonlinear systems. System Dynamics is an intuitive modelling methodology based on qualitative reasoning whereby a conceptual model can be described as a set of cause-effect relationships between variables of a system. Starting from this structure it is possible to get a set of dynamical equations describing quantitatively the system behaviour. Focusing on pharmacologic systems, compartmental modelling is often used for solving a broad spectrum of problems related to the distribution of materials in living systems in research, diagnosis and therapy at whole-body, organ and cellular levels. In this paper we present the System Dynamics modelling methodology and its application to the modelling of a pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic compartmental model of the anaesthetic depth effect in patients undergoing surgical interventions, deriving a simulation model under the OpenModelica object oriented simulation environment. System Dynamics can be viewed as a powerful and easy-to-use educational tool and in teaching of Systems Biology.

Model and neural control of the depth of anesthesia during surgery

At present, the experimentation of anesthetic drugs on patients requires a regulation protocol, and the response of each patient to several doses of entry drug must be well known. Therefore, the development of pharmacological dose control systems is a promising field of research in anesthesiology. In this paper it has been developed a non-linear compartmental pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamical model which describes the anesthesia depth effect on a sufficiently reliable way over a set of patients with the depth effect quantified by the Bi-Spectral Index. Afterwards, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) predictive controller has been designed based on the depth of anesthesia model so as to keep the patient on the optimum condition while he undergoes surgical treatment. For the purpose of quantifying the efficiency of the neural predictive controller, a classical proportional-integral-derivative controller has also been developed to compare both strategies. Results show the superior performance of predictive neural controller during Bi- Spectral Index reference tracking.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Object-Oriented Modeling Simulation and Control of Activated Sludge Process

Object-oriented modeling is spreading in current simulation of wastewater treatments plants through the use of the individual components of the process and its relations to define the underlying dynamic equations. In this paper, we describe the use of the free-software OpenModelica simulation environment for the object-oriented modeling of an activated sludge process under feedback control. The performance of the controlled system was analyzed both under normal conditions and in the presence of disturbances. The object-oriented described approach represents a valuable tool in teaching provides a practical insight in wastewater process control field.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Physical Model of the Cardiopulmonary System and its Interactions using the Object-oriented Multi-Domain Environment SIMSCAPE.

Nowadays, cardiovascular diseases together with chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases represent the main causes of natural death. On a physiological level, the cardiovascular and respiratory systems are closely related as the heart and lungs are responsible for providing nutrients to the body and removing waste substances. The use of mathematical models has contributed to a greater extent to gain an insight into the internal process that take place at cardiovascular and pulmonary level. In this paper electro-hydraulic and mechanic-electrical analogies have been employed to model the cardiovascular and respiratory systems using the SIMSCAPE physical modelling environment. Results have been obtained showing an adequate performance both under physiologic and pathophysiologic situations. The objective is to provide the clinician with a benchmark to get valuable information concerning the performance of the cardiorespiratory system and its tight interrelations.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Mathematical Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of COVID Transmission Epidemy under Intensive Care Units Control Strategy Using Qualitative Causal Diagrams.

The pandemic situation caused by COVID-19 has been one of the greatest problems faced by the world population in recent years. The use of mathematical models and computer simulation techniques have become very important in the study of the spread of infectious diseases. In this paper, a qualitative model of a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control system for intensive care unit (ICU) beds occupancy in a COVID-19 epidemic situation was performed to prevent ICUs from saturation. A SIR-type (Susceptible/Infected/Recovered) qualitative model based on the causal influence diagrams is used to describe the dynamics of the pandemic adjusted to the behavior in space and time of COVID-19. The proposed control system used the demanded quantity of ICU beds as feedback signal to generate a decision policy as control action and simulation results show the practical feasibility and good performance of the proposed control system to prevent from collapse of ICUs based on social distancing and confinement.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

System dynamics modelling approach in Health Sciences. Application to the regulation of the cardiovascular function

The understanding of complex biological systems performance is one of the key issues in physiology, and several computational methods based on computer simulation have been applied to determine the behaviour of nonlinear systems. System Dynamics is an intuitive modelling methodology based on qualitative reasoning, whereby a conceptual physiological model can be described as a set of cause–effect relationships between the physiological variables of a system, so that a set of dynamic equations describing the system behaviour quantitatively can be derived. This paper presents system dynamics modelling methodology and its application for short-term arterial pressure control exerted through the baroreceptor reflex over a multi-compartmental cardiovascular model under the OpenModelica object-oriented simulation environment. The performance of the controlled system is analysed by simulation in light of the existing hypothesis and validation tests previously performed, demonstrating the effectiveness of the short-term regulation mechanism under physiological and pathological conditions. The system dynamics can be viewed as a powerful and easy-to-use educational tool and useful in Health Sciences so as to explain the behaviour of a physiologic system under study

Object-oriented Modeling and Simulation of the Arterial Pressure Control System by using MODELICA

The modeling of physiological control systems via mathematical equations reflects the calculation procedure more than the structure of the real system modeled, and several simulation environment have been used so far for this task. Nevertheless, object-oriented modeling is spreading in current simulation environments through the use of the individual components of the model and its interconnections to define the underlying dynamic equations. In this paper we describe the use of the MODELICATM simulation environment in the object-oriented modeling of the cardiovascular control system. The performance of the controlled system has been analyzed by object-oriented simulation in the light of existing hypothesis and physiological data used here for validation purposes.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. IFMBE, UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILL

Object-oriented modeling and simulation of the closed loop cardiovascular system by using SIMSCAPE

The modeling of physiological systems via mathematical equations reflects the calculation procedure more than the structure of the real system modeled, with the simulation environment SIMULINK™ being one of the best suited to this strategy. Nevertheless, object-oriented modeling is spreading in current simulation environments through the use of the individual components of the model and its interconnections to define the underlying dynamic equations. In this paper we describe the use of the SIMSCAPE™ simulation environment in the object-oriented modeling of the closed loop cardiovascular system. The described approach represents a valuable tool in the teaching of physiology for graduate medical students