An Educational Program for Newcomers to Enhance their Engineering Motivation and Creativity in Faculty of Engineering at Shizuoka University

Abstract

In Faculty of Engineering at Shizuoka University, a new one-year educational program of mechatronics for newcomers will start at April in 2006. This program involves three stages designed to enhance their motivation and creativity in engineering. At the first and second stages, there are three activities; practicing digital circuits, controlling robots with Boe-Bot from Parallax Inc., and making their own microcontroller boards. At the third stage, each student cooperates with his team-mates to make a robot loaded his own board and through the game-type of competition the performance of each team-robot is scored. Through this program, we hope that our students enhance their engineering motivation and creativity.