Interactive Simulations And Games As An Aid To The Learning Process For Engineers

As engineers are increasingly required to gain competencies that require practical knowledge in certain areas, computer-aided software is becoming an essential part of the learning process for university students. With a practical application of one software for the development of failure mode analysis, we want to present a paper on the teaching and learning advantages linked to the employment of interactive simulation and games proposed to students of the third year of mechanical engineering in the course of maintenance and safety of industrial plants. After a synthetic literature analysis on the advantages of the employment of software in the courses of engineering universities, we focused on the description of the proposed case, its solution, and the student’s results. With this assignment, students were required to learn how their decisions could influence a complex system (such as an industrial plant to produce orange juice) and how their choices would have brought to conclusions that needed to be justified to guarantee a profit in five years. The students have introduced adequately to the employed software, TARAS, and lessons were held to answer all the student’s questions on the simulation software.