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An Approach to Teach Mechanical Engineering in Order to Avoid Curriculum Fragmentation Among Technical and Management Classes

Today, engineering education, especially for technical subjects, is quite a challenge due to the high amount of new technologies available in the modern world along with the market competition. The current education system finds difficulties to follow the real speed of world’s development and its requirements. Besides technological limits, a lack of integration between academic subjects is commonly observed. Many times, students struggle to link themselves to the knowledge obtained in correlated subjects, and understand how it all works together in real industry. Taken this issue into account, lecturers of Tupy Superior Institute IST/SOCIESC, a modern engineering school in the south of Brazil, developed a successful education methodology for teaching engineering, by focusing on manufacturing plastic products. South of Brazil holds one of the most important clusters for metal mechanic and plastic industry in Latin America. The proposed educational method aims to improve students` view on process integration and minimizing the impact on the real industrial world after leaving university. It is achieved by simulating a Virtual Industry which produces plastic products. Each field in this manufacturing chain is considered one department of the Virtual Industry, and it is managed by a group of students. The method integrates the mechanical graduation course, propitiating a great improvement in the way of teaching engineering. The proposed approach of teaching engineering has been proved to be very capable and adequate in enhancing students` knowledge, in technical, scientific, management, human behaviour, working as a team. It also helps students` feeling about the real industrial world. The proposed method aids in avoiding educational fragmentation and giving support for engineering graduation in the contemporary world.