At IEEE TryEngineering, our mission is to inspire the engineers of tomorrow by empowering educators with high-quality, accessible STEM resources. Through our partnership with MathWorks, we are working to bring engineering simulations into pre-university classrooms in ways that are engaging, approachable, and meaningful for students with powerful industry-standard tools like MATLAB®.
One of the clearest examples of this collaboration is the Bright Beats Challenge, a hands-on lesson that introduces students to signal processing by blending creativity, technology, and real-world problem solving using micro:bit and MATLAB.
A Hands-On Introduction to Signal Processing
Developed in partnership with MathWorks and the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the Bright Beats Challenge invites students to explore how visual information can be transformed into sound. Using a micro:bit, students create a light-sensitive musical synthesizer that turns light levels into sounds, demonstrating how images can be experienced through audio. The activity also opens conversations about accessibility, showing how engineering can create inclusive ways for people to interact with the world.
In the accompanying MATLAB activity, students take these ideas further by transforming digital image pixels into piano notes. As they experiment, students begin to understand how computers represent images and sound, and how tools like MATLAB support modeling, testing, and refining ideas through simulation. Together, the two parts of the lesson bridge hardware and software while introducing foundational signal processing concepts in a tangible and engaging way.
Bringing Engineering Concepts to Life in the Classroom
The Bright Beats Challenge is especially powerful because it translates complex ideas into experiences students can see, hear, and shape for themselves.
Since the lesson plan launch, educators around the world have used it in the classroom and at community outreach events. Teachers in Saudi Arabia, Uruguay, and the United States are engaging their students in the hands-on design challenge and MATLAB simulation to introduce signal processing concepts.
Last month, 5th-8th grade students in Austin, Texas participated in the Bright Beats Challenge through their afterschool robotics group, led by volunteer educator Gayathri Veale: “Watching waveforms come alive on their screens helped them visualize sound in a way that textbooks cannot. The lesson fit within an hour session and its thoughtful design made complex ideas approachable for middle schoolers beginning their journey into coding and electronics.”
“What truly stood out was how the project tied creativity to problem-solving,” she noted. “As students designed their own light-and-sound systems, they began linking their work to real-world engineering, asking how signals control the music and lights at concerts. That spark of curiosity is the heartbeat of STEM learning.”
A Growing Global Partnership
The Bright Beats Challenge is part of the broader Engineering Simulations Collection on TryEngineering.org, developed in collaboration with MathWorks to support educators and volunteers around the world. The lesson has been explored in several languages, utilized in classrooms, workshops, and events, and supported by a January 2026 webinar that demonstrated how to implement the two-part activity effectively.
Together, IEEE TryEngineering and MathWorks are expanding access to simulation-driven engineering education, helping students understand how technology works and imagine how they can use engineering to solve real-world challenges.