Project-Based Learning of Robotics for Engineering Education improvement

Abstract

Robotics is a multi-disciplinary field and is categorized as one of the toughest courses in the Mechanical Engineering Program (MEP) at Taif University (TU) according to the statistical analysis of the final grades. This multi-disciplinary subject in Engineering involves undergraduate students to go through some difficulties in the robotics theory and practice learning process, as undergraduate robotics courses suffer from lack of appropriate textbooks which cover either too fundamental concepts or too advanced topics and neglecting the combination of the theoretical analysis and the real applications. This motivated us to provide a Project-Based Learning (PBL) approach as an effective teaching technique into robotics course by using real robot projects. This approach is extending to cover the robotic theory topics and their application from different disciplines including Mechanical Design, Kinematics, Sensors, Automatic Control, Microcontrollers, Programming languages, and Software Algorithms Development. In this paper, two examples were provided of conducting the PBL approach into Robotics Course and how they were used to support and improve the teaching of all the robotics topics outlined in the course with system design and application until the later phase of construction. It was found that the PBL has served as an effective active-learning tool in improving the Student Outcomes(SOs) and motivating them to further study and research in robotics and that can be useful to help their local community by utilizing the prior courses' outcomes and robot theory to design real-time systems.