An Innovative Software Tool for Teaching Discrete Convolution from the Perspective of the Output Signal in Digital Signal Processing: Its Software Design and Implementation, and Usage in Teaching and Learning

摘要

This paper describes an approach and a novel software tool that was developed and used by the author of this paper to visually teach discrete convolution to students encountering it for the first time. In order to accomplish this to aid understanding of concepts without losing rigor or completeness, two novel software tools each viewing discrete convolution from a different perspective were designed and implemented in Microsoft Visual C++. This paper describes one of these two software tools. The other is described in a companion paper. The software tool described in this paper was designed and implemented to visually teach discrete convolution by interpreting the discrete convolution equation from the perspective of the output signal in Linear Shift-Invariant systems. By using the approach and software tool described in this paper, it was possible to visually teach discrete convolution from the perspective of the output signal very clearly and thoroughly in a shorter time than was otherwise possible.