Using Gamification and Serious Games to Design a New Curriculum

Using game elements in class to support the participation of students in learning or designing games that can help educators teach certain subjects more efficiently has been a popular topic in recent years. The former is a matter of gamification, which refers to the application of game elements to other activities so that the activity becomes more engaging or interesting. On the other hand, the latter is about designing a serious game, which can be defined as a game with an explicit and carefully thought out educational purpose. In this study, focused on merging the use of gamification and serious games for a specific engineering course, the authors discuss how the curriculum for this course should be designed so that both sides of the spectrum are facilitated. An application of this union is given with a survey showing the reaction of students to the gamified curricula integrated with a serious game.

Remote Laboratories for Engineering Education

The VISIR+ project was an international collaboration project for the dissemination of the remote laboratory VISIR, a tool to support teaching the theory and practice of electrical and electronic circuits. The initiative was first disseminated in Europe, and Latin American countries such as Brazil followed. This chapter essentially aims to discuss the experience of the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil with the VISIR+ project. Various approaches were used for the dissemination of the initiative, including free courses for high school students, teacher training, and the creation of a virtual environment to discuss and share lesson plans that used the remote laboratory VISIR on their plots. In conclusion, the experience was observed as excellent for the institution and there was no reason to put the project ideas aside. After participating in the project, it becomes a challenge to ensure its sustainability.

Challenge-Based Learning

This chapter illustrates a research focused on how to effectively implement the challenge-based learning (CBL) approach in a higher education institution (HEI) in the UK. The challenge was linked to contemporary research conducted by a group of academics, which concerned how digital technologies can positively impact the local economy. The project was named ‘UoL4.0 Challenge', and it proved that designing and implementing CBL educational environments can increase students' propensity to work actively and proactively. The exercise also suggested that CBL may support students in the application of their academic skills and digital capabilities to support their communities. This study presents a description of the case and a reflection on lessons learned with an aim to provide guidelines for other educators and policymakers that are interested in implementing I4.0 educational initiatives at local or national levels. It is also suggested that CBL may play a fundamental role in implementing the triple-helix model of innovation.

Educational Data Mining

The education-training process and all activities related to it have the power to direct the future of societies. From this point of view, the process should be analyzed frequently in terms of input, output, and other process elements. Educational data mining is a multidisciplinary research area that develops methods and techniques for discovering data derived from various information systems used in education. It contributes to the understanding of the learning styles of learners and enables data-driven decision making to develop existing learning practices and learning materials. The number of academic and technical research on educational data mining is on the rise, and this has led to the need to systematically categorize the existing practices. This systematic mapping study was conducted to provide an overview of the current work on educational data mining and its results are based on 153 primary sources including journal papers, articles published in magazines, conference and symposium papers, theses, and others.

Designing a Training Platform for Higher Education Engineering Instructors in the Digital Era

Higher education (HE) should focus on solving the following critical educational problems: (1) using technology and (2) fostering education by new creative learning techniques. In this chapter, the authors indirectly talk about using new technologies in education. There are many reasons that make this choice challenging such as believing in the benefits, having enough knowledge, accessing alternative technological sources, etc. To facilitate this, they introduce an online learning platform for engineering instructors in HE. Moreover, according to their experiences in the field of education and engineering, instructors in HE should improve and revise their skills and knowledge. It is important to enhance knowledge on content, technology, and pedagogy; therefore, this training platform itself focuses on improving those skills necessary for instructors in HE for maintaining an effective learning process. This chapter mainly focuses on creating a course for higher education engineering instructors and a TERR model that is proposed by the authors.

Management by Values in Educational Organizations

Management by values (MBV) is a new form of management that creates a collective spirit and provides value-oriented work by combining people in an organization on common grounds. Even though existing research recognizes the importance of MBV in companies, less is known regarding MBV in educational organizations. This study provides an implementation of MBV at Istanbul Technical University (ITU) with an aim to increase the sense of belonging, create common organizational culture, reach targets, and perform higher so that the current engineering education provided is improved. The current situation of management at ITU was analyzed and an application method was developed, which was later implemented at Faculty of Management at ITU. Primary data used were collected from students, academicians, and managers of ITU via online surveys and face-to-face interviews. The results indicate that MBV, which has various benefits, should be used in educational organizations to build a more qualified educational environment, to raise more qualified students, and to have more satisfied members.

Use of Collaborative Technologies in Engineering Education

The purpose of this chapter is to explain the collaborative problem-solving approach and collaborative technologies that help engineering students to establish and improve collaboration in their coursework. To this end, the theoretical background of collaboration in education and the importance of the learning environments are discussed. Possible effects of a constructivist learning environment on engineering students' educational output are explained. Following that, the collaborative problem-solving approach and collaborative technologies are presented. Then, the collaborative problem-solving method framework and how collaborative technologies can be used with this method in the learning environment of engineering education are explained in detail. Finally, recommendations about future work are presented.

Content Suggestion for Mobile Applications to Facilitate Student Life in Technical Universities

All sorts of products, technologies, and devices are obsoleted more quickly than ever nowadays. Special, mobile applications, which make human life easier in a lot of ways, should always be up to date to avoid falling into disfavor. Thus, they need to keep pace with customer expectations. This study aims to present a way to offer content suggestions for university mobile applications. For this purpose, two focus groups on separate campuses of Istanbul Technical University (ITU) were formed in order to determine student expectations on the university's official mobile application (ITU Mobile). In addition to the 14 currently available features of the ITU Mobile, 32 additional features were identified as expectations, and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was employed to prioritize them. Results indicate that when designing mobile applications, universities should pay attention to several dimensions such as refreshment, life, education, facility, integration with other applications, and transportation to better facilitate their students' campus life.

How Serious Games Contribute to the Learning Experience of Engineering Students and Professionals

Engineers in a globalizing world need innovative skills as well as learning capabilities. They often need to cooperate in different teams in the supply chain of a company. Thus, they should practice before they perform like athletes and musicians do, but they cannot practice by making mistakes since it would be an expensive way to learn. Serious business games serve as a platform for the exchange of ideas, the sharing of expertise, and the alignment of objectives. Higher productivity along with employee satisfaction are their most prominent outcomes. Engineers should be able to work in teams, where behaviors can have both positive and negative effects. Serious business games can support organizations to develop more effective team behavior, influence the level of cooperation in a group, and, in turn, increase the company's profit. In this study, the authors examine a supply chain serious game called “The Fresh Connection” and discuss how it can improve the learning process at the university and further allow people to continue their learning process as an engineering professional.

Emerging Technologies and Educational Requirements in Engineering Education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Higher education institutions and their engineering departments have a vital role in fulfilling the new requirements and opportunities of the information and communication technologies (ICT). Therefore, understanding the guidelines to adapt to the new ICT innovations in relation with the Fourth Industrial Revolution such as the internet of things, cloud computing, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence is vital to determine the emerging patterns in their development, delivery, implementation, and assessment. This study aims to define the new educational requirements in engineering education based on the developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Conducting an in-depth analysis of the current literature revealed that although these emerging technologies have been widely used, there are some challenges being faced for their effective use in engineering education. Therefore, the authors provide some guidelines and discuss possible research directions for the use of these technologies in near future.