Shaping the Mechatronics Courses for the Control Curriculum

Using STEM to Educate Engineers about Sustainability: A Case Study in Mechatronics Teaching and Building a Mobile Robot Using Upcycled and Recycled Materials

“…Through their education, they learn how to study a problem, analyze it, and propose and design feasible, applicable, and acceptable solutions [17]. For this purpose, many didactic approaches have been utilized including problem-oriented and problem-based learning, and recently STEM and Educational Robotics have become the new modern trends of teaching and learning, gaining popularity over the last few years due to their proven learning value even in the higher education [18,19]. STEM methods support students at all education levels to develop cognitive skills in critical thinking and problemsolving [20,21].…”

“…Mechatronics is defined as the intersection of mechanics, electronics, computers, and control [18,40]. Mechatronics is a new and growing field that combines different types of engineering practices to create robots and systems that can think and act on their own.…”

“…It involves technical and non-technical skills like building and designing robots (mechanical engineering), designing and implementing circuits (electrical and electronic engineering), and using computer programs (computer software engineering) to make robots do what we want them to do [19]. Like STEM, the application of Mechatronics in education has been developed in many forms and contexts [18,41]. For instance, Alptekin et al [42], and Amerongen et al [43] pointed out the "integration" aspect of Mechatronics, and that should be a key teaching objective for any engineering curriculum.…”

“…In this direction, existing STEM and Mechatronics teaching models were used from the literature, resulting in the following adapted proposed model that best served the purposes of the Mechatronics course in the IDPE and met the following conditions [42,45,58]:…”

“…It was based on the literature [59][60][61][62], it is a modified model of Chatzopoulos' framework [27], and it utilizes the Computational Thinking Skills Model in synergy with the Teacher Guidance Protocol [63]. The model's four stages (Figure 1) are as follows [18]: 1.…”