Abstract:

The paper provides an overview of the implementation of the constructivist approach in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering’s Mechatronics lectures at the University of West Bohemia. Mechatronics has a crucial role in the ongoing Industrial Revolution 4.0. Any change in a field of technology must come together with a change in the education of future engineers. The classical formal style of lectures is not appropriate, especially in complex interdisciplinary fields, to which mechatronics definitely belongs. Constructivist teaching is based on the principle of active participation of students and their own construction of knowledge, rather than the passive reception of information. The task of the lecturer predominantly is to set doable challenges and so gradually lead the students through the learning process. The paper focuses on the exact implementation during lectures about Digital Twins. A digital twin is a virtual model of a physical asset such as a product, process, system or facility (Grieves, 2002). This field merges classical mechanical engineering with mechatronics, computer science and also presents new challenges for Artificial Intelligence. After a short introduction of basic definitions and the problem, the paper analyses the approach and discusses ways to involve the individual work of students during classes in complex software as soon as it is possible. The main principles of constructivism are explained and then shown in practical examples in the different parts of a class. Learned skills and their importance are shown and described near the end of the paper. The last part focuses on student feedback, problems encountered during the classes and their possible solution.

Keywords:

Mechatronics, Digital Twins, Constructivism, Industry 4.0.