Learning While Playing or Playing While Learning?

Abstract

This paper presents how two teachers of different courses of the third year of the Integrated Master of Industrial Engineering and Management from the University of Minho engaged students in a learning experience. By doing this, teachers considered that it is easier for the students to learn the course contents. The goal of this experience was to challenge students to acquire competencies in Process Control and Automation and Production Systems Organization I courses, in a friendly and cooperative way. Attending that students are digitally natives, curious, and easily think “out of the box”, the question is to shoot the trigger and motivate them. Achieving this, they respond with a dedicated and professional attitude, applying the acquired competencies to develop creative products and production systems. Some results of this learning experience are presented in the paper and include the concepts and outputs they produced. The student’s qualitative feedback was very positive and enthusiastic which allowed the authors to conclude that this type of challenge is worth investing in future editions of the courses. A limitation of this learning experience is the high number of students in each team.