Abstract:

Technological degrees offer a wide variety of opportunities to make real incursions into the world outside academia. Students are able to experiment with real practical experiences that allows them to learn real lessons that would otherwise be impossible to learn. Even more, these technological and practical resources and experiments open many possibilities for teachers to foster active learners who see the classroom as a place they want to be.

It is a fact that students learn better when they make experiences with real systems. But many times we teachers take for granted that from the experiments they learn “content”, that is, theory, terms, ideas. However, there is much more behind the experience of just carrying out a real experiment.

Showing the students that there is a real link between outside word and what they are learning, that this knowledge will help them to perform better in their professional career, will engage them more deeply in the learning process. It will show the students that these lessons behind a practical experience can be applied beyond school and university.

There is some “hidden” learning that comes from the experiment in addition to the subject it is related to. For example, in this work we will show the lessons a student learns when assembling a physical system, in our case, an autonomous mobile robot. First of all, it as a multidisciplinary project, and they have to apply physics, mechanics, electronics, computing, mathematics, ….

They also acquire transversal skills such as: manual skills, to pay attention, patience, concentration, to consult books and participate in forums, etc.

Above all, to build something from scratch teaches them to address and overcome many issues. And they have to develop an attitude to make them find why something is not working properly. In the case of this mobile robot, it could be a wrong connection of the cable, the battery is not charged, the behavior of the four wheel rotors is not symmetric, etc.

When they discover what caused the failure and are able to solve it they feel proud of themselves and satisfied with their work, and have more interest and initiative to apply their knowledge.

In addition, the rethinking of their ideas opens their minds to other approach, as they explore new ways to relate to the actual vast and new technology world.

The ultimate purpose of education must be to prepare students for life. Engagement through practical and interactive technological experiments will encourage students to become better learners, and will give them a bigger picture of the utility of the education.

Keywords:

Technology, Practical experiments, Real systems, Autonomous mobile robot, transversal skills.