Learning and motivational impact of a social-purpose educational project in engineering students

Active learning methods such as Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) are becoming increasingly prevalent in engineering education, however the literature reports few projects with social purpose. This research examines the evolution of a socially committed educational project named OSOR (Open-source and SOcial Responsibility) over four years, focusing on its impact on the learning process, student satisfaction, and perceived difficulty within the context of a Manufacturing Technology course in the Industrial Engineering curriculum. The OSOR raises a relevant social challenge that seeks to locally (and globally) mitigate the lack of assistive products for people who are in a situation of dependency due to accidents or illnesses. We compared the learning outcomes and perceptions of 108 students using both tests and tailored surveys, along with the retrospective evaluation of 64 products resulting from the project. Transitioning from PBL, where students proposed hypothetical cases, to CBL involving real patient cases, boosted student motivation, and learning effectiveness, despite increasing the perceived difficulty.