Abstract:

Most of the requirements in engineering education posed by industry are common in a globalized world but the approaches used by universities to cope with them differ from country to country. Higher education teaching not only involves the mere transfer of knowledge but it should also provide future engineers with those skills demanded by society for a good citizenship. Teaching methods and pedagogical tools often depend on the tradition and political background of any given nation. Some academic systems encourage students to take full responsibility of the learning process by completing a project with open solutions where a critical eye is essential and not every alternative is valid. Project based activities are key to put this approach into practice. Some educational systems with less independence from the central government tend to limit students’ initiatives by organising teaching activities more rigidly, reducing students options to listen and accept without considering their personal response. This attitude places most of the learning responsibility on the instructor. Nevertheless, both styles have strong points and weaknesses, and project base learning, while excellent for some subjects and situations, might not work for others where traditional teaching could perfectly fit. Very often the optimum point is reached by a combination of both philosophies in the same course. This paper reports the experiences learned at two European universities after several years of teaching a Machine Design course structured as a mix of traditional education with compulsory attendance and project based learning.

Keywords:

classroom teaching, project-based teaching (pbt), project-based learning (pbl), machine design.