Enhancing Students' Hands-on Experience and Communication Capabilities through Mechatronics Engineering Program

This paper details the development process of senior-level mechatronics courses which cover comprehensive knowledge of Mechanical, Electronic, Computer and Control Engineering. The overall course objective is to provide mechatronics engineering students an opportunity to work together on software and hardware design with cross-coupled mechanical, electronic and computer subsystems. Meanwhile, considering the cross-disciplinary nature of the mechatronic engineering, we explore various approaches to enhancing students' communication and collaboration capabilities based on their solid theoretical knowledge and rich hands-on experience learned from different courses. Students are required to take the course of Computational Methods in Engineering to intensify their skills of critical thinking and problem solving and they are organized to work on course projects in a team. Furthermore, with the help of faculty members, they develop their course projects or innovative ideas into conference papers or tutorial/postal topics and present them in educational and technical conferences. Their performances working in a team and dialogue with professionals in the field, will build up their confidence and skills for their future jobs in the area of mechatronic engineering.