Teaching Approach and Materials for Enhancing Student Learning Experience in Tomography Engineering: Soft-Field Tomography

Abstract

This paper presents the development of course materials and a laboratory exercise for teaching the course “Tomography Engineering and Applications” for MSc and MEng students. The lecturing materials are enhanced by developing MATLAB codes that illustrate the working principles of finite difference and finite elements methods, allowing students to step through the algorithm development procedures and gain better insights into the taught theoretical concepts. A virtual laboratory excise is developed to allow the students to interact with image reconstruction examples by varying the controlling parameters and exam their effects. Then an assignment is designed to enhance the student learning experience by encouraging students to explore and form appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of image reconstruction for electrical resistance tomography using EIDORS. In the process, a number of important skills in scientific research can be gained by students, i.e. make careful observations, carry out critical analysis of the results, draw sensible conclusions and report the findings in a logical manner. It is believed that these three teaching and learning components form an integral and comprehensive approach to teaching Tomography Imaging techniques at the MEng and MSc level.