Toy design experience: Improving students' motivation and results in a final year subject

In recent years educational gaming has been progressively perceived as a very effective tool for improving teaching-learning activities in higher education. The use of such play-based methodologies for engineering education can promote several practical and communication skills of great value for students' future professional development. At the same time it greatly helps to motivate students and make them more aware of their own capabilities and the learning process. This paper details the application of a play-based methodology for improving students' results and motivation in the subject “Development of Plastic Products”. The active learning strategy consists in assigning student groups different toy development tasks, so that they can apply the design concepts learned and present their results in public. It is thereby hoped to promote a set of abilities that are ever increasingly valued in the industrial and business world, such as teamwork, creativity and communications skills. Results have been compared with experiences from previous years, linked to the development of conventional products. The results show that carrying out a monographic experience on “Toy - Design” has promoted students' satisfaction, motivation and results. Some ideas for future improvements, mainly based on students' opinions, are also discussed.