Using Educational Robotic Exoskeleton for the Acquisition of Cross-Curricular Competences in Higher Education

Abstract

Today, Spanish universities are already adapted to the Common European Higher Education Area, which is based on the acquisition of competences by the student. Nevertheless, while the acquisition of specific competences is well assumed by the different subjects of each degree, the same is not true for cross-curricular competences. More specifically, in most engineering studies, these competences are developed indirectly through elective subjects or other complementary training activities. The main objective of this work is to design a prototype of a low-cost and open-access exoskeleton that can be used in different engineering degrees for the acquisition of cross-curricular competences. Once this prototype has been designed, we propose to use it in a practice to be carried out in the laboratory following the project-based learning methodology from a STEAM approach. With the use of a robotics kit and a project-based learning methodology, we achieve the goals of educational robotics and computational thinking in a higher education environment.