Development of tangible experiments for motivating undergraduate students

Nowadays, dropping out of engineering courses practically occurs in all universities of the world. Over the past few years, active learning has been recognized by the educational community as the most effective learning method, that involves direct, purposeful learning experiences, such as hands-on or field experiences. In this paper we will discuss the educational experience associated with the design and development of projects to motivate the students of Control and Automation Engineering and Electrical Engineering during a semester of Industrial Robotics and Integrated Manufacturing Systems courses. The key learning objectives and tools used to implement them and the evaluation results will be detailed. Our focus was to introduce how those multidisciplinary works could help the students increase their motivation and improve their professional skills such as problem solving, team work and leadership. Evaluation results show that those projects were effective in engaging the students and as well as an effective active learning tool.