Research, Development and Innovation: An Extracurricular Club Case Study

Several approaches have demonstrated the effectiveness of project-based learning in the acquisition of students’ academic outcomes and development of practical professional skills. In addition to academic engineering outcomes, professional skills such as teamwork, leadership, decision-making, entrepreneurship, intellectual property, and social commitment are considered crucial in this line of work. Taking the project-based learning technique and research development and innovation approaches as a starting point, a novel methodology is proposed, introducing students through extracurricular activities to a multidisciplinary methodology. The main objective is to facilitate the acquisition of professional skills that are useful in the professional life of every student, while high-quality engineering prototypes are produced. Multidisciplinary teams, including not only science, technology, engineering and mathematics majors, business management, and accounting majors, are also considered to generate significant learning with a strong connection to the environment. Students can apply theoretical and technical knowledge to the development of engineering projects while also acquiring professional skills. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through academic results and a survey.