Teaching engineering subjects for non-engineering high school students using project-based learning approach

Abstract

In the last fifteen years, there has been a noticeable decrease in the number of students at technical universities in the Czech Republic, mainly related to the declining population curve. On the other hand, the demand of industrial companies for technically oriented graduates is growing. As this disproportion continues to grow, universities are trying to attract new students from non-technical schools.To put it simply, upper secondary schools in the Czech Republic can be divided into practically oriented (vocational) and general education (grammar schools). In the past, the vast majority of students of technical faculties were recruited from vocational technical secondary schools. In recent years, there has been a trend to attract students from grammar schools. To do this, however, it is necessary to overcome the psychological barrier that most of these students suffer, namely the fear of ignorance of the technology and thus the fear of failure in further technical studies.This contribution aims to acquaint with the authors' activity aimed at overcoming the psychological barrier among grammar school students. The activity is based on solving a technical problem within the elective course. In cooperation with an industrial company, an assignment is prepared that simulates a fictitious order. Students have the task to analyze the assignment, on the basis of available information sources to process the current state-of-the-art in solving the problem. Then they propose their solution and try to work it out to the model stage and project documentation. All the time, the teacher corrects their designs and provide them with further information, e.g. about usable materials, production technologies, related standards, etc. The advantage of this approach is that the student is not overwhelmed by a huge amount of facts about all possible materials, technologies, etc., and then uses only a small part of them for the solution, but gets just the information he needs. The goal of the project is then achieved much faster and students are motivated and less often lose interest in the issue. Another important element of this project is the direct link to industrial partners who are actively involved in student leadership. This link to industry also has an incentive effect, since the applicability of the information presented is immediately visible. An obvious shortcoming of this approach is the absence of additional knowledge and context, which is presented to vocational high school students during the normal teaching process. However, the aim of this activity is not to strive for comprehensive education, but to overcome the above-mentioned psychological barrier and motivate students of grammar schools to continue at technical universities.The conclusion of the paper describes two specific projects of this type implemented in recent years.