FUSING PROGRAMMING AND THERMODYNAMICS IN A FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING COURSE

This paper describes a first-year undergraduate engineering course called Energy that has been developed and taught at the Department of Engineering at Reykjavik University. The aim of this course was to merge Matlab programming and thermodynamics into one course. In this course the students learn the fundamentals of thermodynamics and solve thermodynamic and energy related assignments using Matlab programming.  Other courses that the first-year students are taking simultaneously also integrate Matlab into their curriculum to some degree.  In the 2020 course the syllabus of Matlab programming and thermodynamics was fused together from day one, with many students having difficulty in learning the basic programming while taking in new theoretical relations of thermodynamics. This was changed in the 2021 course where the first 4 weeks of the course focused almost entirely on Matlab programming and the remaining 8 weeks focused on thermodynamics, where Matlab was used as a tool to solve problems.  In 2022 this was split into two courses, one 4 weeks Matlab course and one 8 weeks Energy course where students continue to use Matlab.  The course is being developed further, but the main feedback from students is that they prefer the content of programming and thermodynamics to be distinguished to some extent. Developing this course is in line with the CDIO standards 3 and 4; Integrated curriculum and Introduction to engineering where students get real data to work with which relates them more to modern and current engineering challenges in energy related topics.  This will prepare them for working on the energy challenges the world is now facing.