Building Small Prototypes in a PBL Intervention for Learning Automatic Control Systems

This paper introduces a Project-Based Learning (PBL) intervention for the learning of automatic control systems. This intervention explores the building of local platforms for experimentation as a learning trigger; an educational experience that covers two issues: (i) to encourage students to develop both engineering skills and transversal skills in an exemplary learning scenario, trying to face several challenges of control education, and (ii) to make an affordable experimental set-up for laboratory practices. The proposed PBL intervention, defined into a curricular alignment model, appears as an integrating solution that involves teaching, learning and evaluation activities, learning outcomes, learning spaces and staff in the building of small control plant prototypes, whose elaboration must meet design requirements, recreating a professional task. The results obtained from the students' feedback and teachers' observations show advantages including the application of previous knowledge and concepts from other areas, especially signals and electronics, practical experimentation, strengthening transversal skills, working with others, and the design of a plant prototype from a constructionist view. Nevertheless, participants commented that their workload increased considerably, and the tutoring results in a more demanding environment than in teacher-centred models.