A win-win game: Students learn, Researchers gain
Convener: Sara Shafiee, Martin Løkkegaard, Niels Henrik Mortensen, Christian Alexander Bertram (Technical University of Denmark, Department of Mechanical Engineering)
Abstract:
A successful implementation of personalized products requires effective use of modular product design. Modularity has also positive impacts on profitability, new product development flexibility, and the number of compatible suppliers. Developing families of products, based on shared and standardized platforms assets is an approach utilized by industrial companies to offer product variance to heterogeneous markets while limiting internal complexity, cost and time-to-market. The significance of modularity has encouraged the educational practitioners at universities to include it in both curriculums and research projects.
At Technical University of Denmark, we set up a game in which engineering student competed in manufacturing cars made from LEGO bricks and with minimum defects over three rounds of 22 minutes. The experiment showed a great engagement from the students and a better understanding of the concept in the report and examination evaluations compared to the last years. Moreover, the experiment reports that increasing the Product Line Commonality Index allowed the teams to more than double the output of their “factories” (rom 47,8% to 88,4%). Compared to productivity and quality, results show an increased output of 118% and a decrease in product defects by 31% when applying a platform-based approach.
In this workshop we answer the following questions:
1. How can gamification improve teaching and learning experience for engineering students?
2. How can we use the outcome of that experience to investigate about a certain research domain?