Can we use a MATLAB application to improve student performance on trigonometry of vector problem solving?

Vectors are a basic concept for electrical and mechanical engineering and computer science students. To improve the performance of students in classes such as statics, control theory, and computer graphics it is necessary to improve their performance on computing components of vectors. We wrote a computer graphics, animated application in MATLAB to provide students with a method to improve their performance on computing vector trigonometric components. MATLAB is a good choice for doing numerical computations and graphical interface writing; however, the object-oriented animated graphics were difficult to program. We assessed one group of first-year engineering students on vector trigonometric computations who had access to the MATLAB application before the test. We assessed another group of first-year engineering students without access to the application (the control group). Using Student´s t-test, the students´ mean performance improved at the P = 0.05 significance level.