Two characteristics of the Tec21 Educational Model at Tecnologico de Monterrey are learning-basedon-challenges (LBC) and the attempt to provide memorable experiences during university education. These challenges and experiences are being created through activities to develop problem-solving competencies in the students. These activities where they apply their classroom learning are designed to be attractive and challenging for the students. The Industrial Engineering and Design departments of Tecnologico de Monterrey have merged the design of experiments and design thinking to create a methodology that allows students to design successful academic activities and provides added value in education. During the last 12 years, students at Tecnológico de Monterrey have experienced various activities both in Semana i and Semestre i (new class periods created under the Tec21 Educational Model). The learning activities contained challenges to resolve during the school periods, which evidence significant learning, as reported in the end-of-semester evaluations. By proposing academic activities based on a multilevel factorial model, a statistical model has been generated to find the best combination of the component factors and levels to give us a probability of success greater than 90% when implementing the activities. Following the design-thinking methodology allows the institution to immerse with the students, be empathetic, and clearly define our expectations of them and, consequently, have a robust activity design. Various design factors are built into the activities to make them attractive and challenging for the students and enable them to apply their classroom learning.

The worldwide confinement due to Covid19 has boosted creativity in academia to develop learning activities with role-playing games and multidisciplinary workshops brought to our students' homes. Tecnologico de Monterrey, like most universities in the world, is delivering classes remotely using internally developed and external platforms designed to continue the practices that were done every day in laboratories, facilities, and visits to companies and institutions. This document describes the migration of academic activities, designed under the university's Tec21 Educational Model guidelines, to an internet platform that adopts virtual and augmented reality to deliver learning with the same academic quality as the traditional face-to-face classes. Our training partners in industry, government, and not-for-profit organizations can communicate and access the practice activities on the virtual platforms. The Tecnologico de Monterrey School of Engineering and Design has worked to generate a simulator of an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system based on the educational platform "Tec21 Car Assembler." Using virtual reality, the student can apply the virtual classroom's theoretical learning to practice, guided by an academic figure who collaborates with training partners from companies and institutions associated with Tecnologico de Monterrey to transfer knowledge to students. Through virtual and augmented reality, the students have been able to interact with the scale car assembly through the EON XR platform, where teachers have designed different lessons based on car assemblies and subassemblies, in this case, Jeep. We are developing our own platform for assembling Meccano designs that can be made by students first using second and third simulations until they can be taken to assembly, using augmented reality and finally, virtual reality.

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Currently, university students expect to obtain not only valuable knowledge about their majors, but they also want to develop different skills that will allow them to develop and stand out in the highly competitive world of work in which we find ourselves. To achieve this, Tecnologico de Monterrey implemented the Tec21 model, a challenge-based learning system focused on the development of both disciplinary and transversal competencies. Among the innovative tools used to promote these competencies we can find, after our research, the gamification: a technique that uses the resources of a game to promote student learning in an unconventional way, resulting in an excellent means for the development of the competencies. At the beginning of the pandemic, educational institutions reinvented themselves through innovation to make distance learning efficient. At Tecnologico de Monterrey, we have sought to develop problem-solving competencies through the implementation of two gamification strategies: an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) simulator that emulates the processes of a scale car model manufacturing line and a role-playing game in which students solve problems through a scenario. Three important factors were considered for gamification: engagement, academic rigor, and the development of competencies, all this has been enhanced with the use of emerging technologies such as immersive, augmented, and virtual reality, which allow students to have access to Laboratories at a distance and at any time. The theoretical concepts used, the situations or problems selected, the dynamics of the game, and the use of technological elements such as augmented reality and the use of the Tec Virtual Campus, have made this project an enrichment experience for the users, since the students spent an average of 32 hours of practice per week, improved their confidence in the application of problem-solving methodologies and developed teamwork, problem-solving, and information analysis skills. One of the greatest achievements, additional to the academic aspect, was the increased emotional stability of the students, which had been affected by episodes of depression derived from the confinement.