Università di Bologna

CITAMCentro Interfacoltà per le Tecnologie Didattico-Educative Teleaudiovisive “G. Marconi”

European Community

Project VirtUEVirtual University for Europe

present

Dynamic SystemIdentification

a project by

Roberto Guidorzi

on experimenting alternativedistribution channels

for specialistic and post-master courses

Contents

This course describes the use of identification techniques i.e. of procedures that allow constructing mathematical models for dynamical processes on the basis of measures, affected by errors, performed on these processes.

Application areas

Every aspect of the world around us is constituted by dynamical processes.

Areas where identification techniques can beapplied extend from macroeconomy tobiology, from finance to ecology, controlof industrial processes (chemical, electrical,mechanical, petrochemical etc.), medicine,meteorology etc.

Structure and educational targets

The contents of the course are structured into four modules whose proper compositionallows to obtain courses equivalent totraditional courses with lengths between 30 and 90 hours and with educational targetsranging from undergraduate to Ph.D.students.

Educational methodologies

The learning path is based on three levels of interaction:

between students and course contents(hypertexts and video)

between students and their Tutor

between students and problems concerningreal processes (situated learning)

Hypertexts

All hypertexts have been composed usingscalable vector fonts in a TeX environmentand Adobe technology to generate PDF(Portable Document Format) hypertexts.All well-known TeX features are thus joinedwith the operative flexibility and platformindependence of PDF.The use of vector fonts allows obtaining best results at any screen resolution.

Communicating with Tutors

An high operational flexibility in accessinga course can be achieved avoiding the useof synchronous communication channelsbetween Tutors and learners (video, audio etc.).The channel implemented inside this courserelies on the asynchronous communicationpotentialities offered by Web servers; amongthe many advantages, also the possibility ofgetting real-time confirms of data reception.

Interactive identification laboratory

The laboratory has been developed usingonly Java and relies on efficient implemen-tations of the identification algorithmsdescribed in the course.It allows students to perform locally andin a way completely independent from thehardware and software platform that theyuse, identification experiments on dataconcerning real processes belonging toseveral areas.

Process data base

The purpose of the course is to make studentscapable of applying identification techniquesin professional environments.This goal can be reached only working on realdata; to this purpose the data base of the course contains data measured on realprocesses belonging to several areas,from finance to ecology, from macroeconomyto meteorology, chemical, petrochemical,electrical processes etc.

FAQ

The well known effectiveness of FAQ(Frequently Asked Questions) opens anotherway to integrate the contents of the coursefocusing the points where the students meetmajor difficulties.

FAQ replies have been inserted on the serveras short video clips.