Abstract:

During the last academic years, the teaching staff of the subject Machine Technology of the third year of the Degree in Industrial Technologies Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) have been noticing an evident lack in the students when it comes to determining the transmission of axial efforts in shafts. This is a threshold concept for sizing the shafts, obtaining the reactions on the supports, and selecting the appropriate bearings.

A voluntary activity has been designed to reinforce this concept by combining the Lessons and Exams tools in PoliformaT, the Learning Management System used at the UPV. The activity consists of a series of 15 exercises arranged in increasing complexity, in which the next one cannot be accessed until the previous exercise is answered correctly. Each exercise consists of a shaft on which different transmission elements are mounted (gears, pulleys, ...). The students have to calculate the value of the axial effort in various sections along the axis.

The activity has been carried out in competition mode to motivate the students. Each student receives a score depending on the question reached and the number of attempts necessary to reach that point. At the end of the given period, the final classification is published. This work aims to expose all this educational experience, from the design of the activity, its implementation, the results obtained, and its impact on the students' final grades. Based on the analysis of these results, a series of improvements to be implemented for the next academic year are proposed.

Keywords:

Gamification, threshold concept, formative assessment, machine design.