Abstract:

Engineering degrees usually constitute the first contact with theoretical Fluid Mechanics for students, which represents a challenge for lecturers since this is a discipline embracing many applications and complex mathematical and experimental foundations. Furthermore, conveying a complete portrait of this field has been proven to be a difficult goal to meet due to the limited time at disposal, as is the case of new undergraduate engineering curricula, based on a multidisciplinary approach that combines plenty of introductory courses. These limitations hinder the student’s learning process, who might get a biased overall idea of the importance and the scope of Fluid Mechanics. Part of the knowledge and skills that the pupils acquire during the Fluid Mechanics courses are related to practises conducted at the experimental lab, where some engineering applications and measurement procedures are described. However, taking into account the reduced time and the just started ongoing learning process, the number of these sessions results scarce and the experimental techniques employed are the most fundamental ones. The latter, along with the fact that students are generally attracted by complex applications of what they learn at theory lectures and labs sessions, suggest that the use of additional teaching resources would be advisable to meet such demands. In this sense, new technologies provide the lecturer with helpful tools to accomplish this task, fostering the self-learning process and rendering it appealing for the students.

Thus, considering the large number of available high-technology measurement equipment that is employed for researching purposes, we propose in this work an educational technique implemented in our lab that aims at presenting to student this advanced equipment, whose physical and use principles are not covered within any basic course. In this regard, all the existing measurement equipment, such as wind tunnels, laser and hot-wire anemometry equipment, among others, have been given a Quick Response (QR) code, so that any student can use them to gain access to self-made teaching materials, i.e. information, explanation guides and tutorials on the different techniques, which allow them to fulfil their eagerness and interest on this challenging subject, as well as complements their formation, improving and developing new skills and providing with more complete professionals engineers.

Keywords:

Self-learning, QR-Codes, Lab Sessions.