Educate complex C programming artefacts for robotics to mechanical engineers freshmen - Array, Pointer, Loop

Hardware programming skills are essential to develop control software of robot-like-systems. However, a significant percentage of mechanical engineering students struggles, especially if 'complex' programming constructs like arrays, loops and pointers are combined. A concept for continuous monitoring of learning success throughout a course on digitalization and C programming using different objective and subjective assessments is introduced. After a pre-analysis of challenges in different learning milestones, an application-oriented approach to teach these concepts using real world engineering examples is proposed. Immediate and continuous feedback is recorded during lectures to check students' learning progress. Emotional engagement serves as subjective assessment. As objective assessment, three different methods are used: classical web-based assessments, muddy cards and exam rates. The results confirm the benefit: 5 percentage points better exam results and a 15 percentage points reduced dropout rate in web-based assessments. Nevertheless, the concept of pointers, interlinked with dynamic data types such as linked lists remain troublesome in the exam despite very good results in web-based assessments. The mapping of a 2D information like a matrix of sensor values into a 1D storage structure like a data register using the appropriate address type seems to be too abstract to understand for mechanical and process engineers.