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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Creative Teaching Methods for Educating Engineers

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description

Active learning has received considerable attention over the past several years. Often presented or perceived as a radical change from traditional instruction, the topic frequently polarizes academic staff. Todays students are bombarded with plenty of information and are distracted by technology gadgets (such as smart phones) or suffer from attention deficit disorder [10]. Thus, academic staffs are challenged to capture students attention and to engage them in the didactic process. The paper presents two innovative teaching methods experimented in the seminaries of the Production Planning course that has been taught at the Faculty of Engineering of Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu and the impact of these methods on the students knowledge assimilation and academic performance. The proposed teaching methods, namely charades games and movie making activities, were implemented and evaluated. The research tools used for this study were: direct observation, comparative analysis of students academic performances, before and after the implementation of the methods, and course evaluation forms, filled in by the students. The experimented teaching methods were considered by the students both fun and challenging and were confirmed as promising pedagogies. Thus, we recommend that active learning techniques, such as charades games or movie making activities, be used in conjunction with traditional lecture formats in university courses. These activities show promise as active learning techniques which foster student interest, help students apply material to real world situations, and may be remembered by students well after the course ends.