Application of a inter-university competition on the enhancement of engineering degrees

Abstract

Within the frame of an innovative teaching project call of the University of Cantabria (Spain), authors have taken advantage of their experience on an inter-university competition (whose main goal is the design and construction of a motorbike among other tasks) in order to apply it on the Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Technologies degrees. The main idea of this experiment is to include a specific activity in each course which were related to this specific competition, using problem and project based learning techniques with the aim of studying some aspects of the analysis and design of components for the motorbike. Two courses, Applied Mechanics and Mechanisms Theory, have participated in this experiment. In the first one, it was proposed a problem about friction of the motorbike’s tires, which were modelled as rigid multibody system. In the second one, an open-ended project about the redesign of the rear suspension system of the University of Cantabria original motorbike that took part in the 2010 competition was proposed. Both activities were eligible for students. Results show that the students that took part in the proposed activities pass the courses in a more easy and satisfactory way.