Instructional Resources Using MATLAB and Simulink

Here are the resources you need to get started teaching online using MATLAB and Simulink. With these tools, you can create and deliver interactive lectures and courses that engage students in active learning.

Get Started Creating Interactive Courses

Join educators around the world in using live scripts, MATLAB apps, and MathWorks online training to engage students and improve learning outcomes. For more information on assessing students’ MATLAB skills and mastery of learning objectives, visit the Online Assessments page.

Dr. Thomas Popham at the University of Warwick uses live scripts, MATLAB apps, and an online course to equip his engineering students with data science skills.

Learn more

Live Editor

Live Editor enables you to create an interactive notebook through live scripts and combine explanatory text, live code, equations, and results in one document. Here are some of the ways educators use Live Editor:

Lecture materials

Divide your document into different executable sections to help you navigate code while lecturing, keep pace with the material, and easily stop and go back to reinforce a concept if there are questions. Breaking up the document can also help students focus their attention.

Assignments

Add controls such as sliders, drop-down lists, buttons to control variable values, or Live Editor Tasks (2:16) to help students focus on learning the concept rather than the code. Students can interact with these controls to change results and manipulate plots to explore concepts further.

Project reports

Export the live script as a PDF, Microsoft Word, HTML, or LaTeX file. You can hide the code to focus on the narrative and results or include everything in your report.

Courseware examples

Explore lessons with curriculum materials containing flexible, easily modified live scripts. Courseware modules include:

Try a live script in your browser now and get a feel for creating your own interactive course materials.

Run example in your browser

Here are a few resources to learn more about live scripts:
- - Watch a short video:
  - How to Use Live Scripts in MATLAB (3:41)
- - Try using Live Editor yourself with online training:
  - Teaching with Interactive Scripts (20 minutes)
- - Explore documentation:
  - Live Scripts and Functions

MATLAB Apps

MATLAB apps are interactive applications that provide instant visual feedback and help you understand how different algorithms affect data. The Apps tab of the MATLAB toolstrip shows you the apps you currently have installed. As an example, the Color Thresholder app is included in Image Processing Toolbox and Computer Vision Toolbox.

You or your students can create custom apps using App Designer. Designing a MATLAB app challenges students to demonstrate their understanding of a concept and enables them to experience thinking like a designer. See an example where a professor had his students create MATLAB apps for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam.

Visit the Virtual Labs and Projects page for more information on creating or using apps for virtual labs.

Explore apps on File Exchange

Online Training

Many educators looking to implement a flipped-classroom model have found success using MathWorks online training. These interactive tutorials are often assigned by instructors as prerequisites and help students learn MATLAB and Simulink or refresh their skills. Shareable progress reports and course certificates ensure tasks are completed.

Explore our online courses

“The feedback is on point and immediate, which stimulates learning. This is an extremely valuable way to learn the tools required to start programming, and I wish I could have had MATLAB Fundamentals when I was learning to use MATLAB!”

– Prof. Carolina Tropini, University of British Columbia

“The MATLAB tutorials made a day-and-night difference in my ability to teach computational methods, with a flipped classroom to maximize the outcome.”

– Dr. Yu-li Wang, Carnegie Mellon University

“Taking time away to teach a software tool is difficult. That’s why the MATLAB online training and the tutorials are perfect for us; they enable students to learn essential skills outside of class.”

– Prof. Paolo Biscari, Politecnico di Milano

Cloud-Based Tools for Teaching

Ensuring that students have access to programs and well-organized, current course materials is key to successful online learning. MATLAB Online and Simulink Online are available through a web browser and update automatically, providing you and your students with a consistent platform.

Whether you prefer MATLAB Online or MATLAB on your desktop, you can collaborate with your students and provide cloud storage for sharing course material using MATLAB Drive. Any content modifications sync with what your students see. Students access MATLAB Drive from the browser, their desktops, and MATLAB Mobile and can share completed assignments with you, which you can run directly in MATLAB.

Try MATLAB Online and MATLAB Drive with these interactive lessons in our Teaching with MATLAB course:

Moving to the Cloud (15 minutes)
Sharing Content (15 minutes)

Online Teaching with MATLAB and Simulink: From Instructors to Students – Distributing Files Through an LMS Using MATLAB Drive (6:43)