Abstract:

Industrial Engineering related degree students present a lack of motivation in many stages and courses during their formation due mainly to several factors, among them, their perspective of learning concepts and skills that are not really demanded by their industry, it is always a recurrent student complaint. Moreover, the EHEA (European Higher Education Area) promotes the active participation of the students during their formation and the development of multiple transversal and general competencies during their degree, including the End-of-Degree Project (EDP) course. Taking all these aspects into consideration Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Practical Case-Based Learning are well-established methodologies commonly used as complete tools that can be used to evaluate multiple transversal skills while addressing a complex problem or challenge that sometimes can be motivating for the students.
In this case, the challenge or topic proposed to develop the EDP must try to provide a solution to a social problem by focusing on the individual. In particular, the project must end with a solution that will solve a difficulty or obstacle for people who may suffer from difficulties in their daily lives, barriers to social inclusion, etc. In this way, the advantage of developing a complete project in terms of competence evaluation is combined with an additional motivation that the student will feel when he/she finds two things: 1) that their project has a direct utility, 2) that their work can help people with difficulties to improve their quality of life.

During the 22/23 academic year, this methodology is being implemented with 3 students of the Industrial Management Engineering Degree at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, which must follow the different stages of the the project:
1) Identification of social needs that can be covered with the design and development of solutions manufactured by 3D printing.
2) Identification of the requirements of the proposed solution, limitations of 3D printing technology for the same and the advantages that its use can provide in the design of the chosen solution.
3) Design, evaluation, redesign (if required) and manufacturing.
4) Evaluation of the result, identification of defects and assessment of its suitability for the proposed solution.
5) Delivery and assessment by the user.
6) Multifocal evaluation.

Regarding the development of the activity, only 33% of the students have been completely proactive in looking for problems and proposing solutions. The second problem they face is the difficulty for associations or organizations to deal with their questions because there is usually a low motivation of the staff in charge of these people and, in other cases, a work overload that prevents them from clearly distinguishing what is publicity from activities, such as the present one, that can give them a real solution.
Once identified, the students do show a greater interest that is reflected both in the ideas they present and, above all, in their desire to complete the activity to verify its final usefulness. Thus, it is considered that this type of Service-Learning methodology has been of great interest for the degrees and allows including other social skills in the engineering degree curriculum while keeping the specific technical competencies into consideration, moreover, increasing motivation and closing the circle of collaboration and help among the different social actors.

Keywords:

Service Learning, End-of-Degree Project, Project Based Learning, Engineering, STEM.