Project-based High School Mechatronics Course

Mechatronics is a complex, highly technical, multidisciplinary subject that involves the design and manufacture of integrated products. In order to teach it properly in a course, student teams have to engage in designing a product. Due to the complicated nature of mechatronic products, such a project further complicates the administration of mechatronics courses. This paper presents a design of a course for non-technical high school students. The design includes elements that motivate students to devote extra hours for technology study; it leads students to successfully design products through managing a team project with little budget and scarce teaching resources. We present the structure of the course and its evaluation. We conclude that such a course can be taught to non-technical university students thus bringing them closer to understanding technology and engineering.