Building the bridge between mechanical curricula and practical application through a mechatronic project

In order to build the bridge between mechanical curricula and practical application, a complete mechatronics project handwriting robot is chosen for motivating students to integrate the concepts they have learned in class. By breaking up the development process of this project, some sub-projects are reasonably allocated to the teaching of mechanical courses from the perspective of machinery and control. With the completion of in-class studies, together with necessary after-class research, a practical mechatronic handwriting robot is developed from nothing. Considering the difference in students' abilities, the degree of difficulty is involved in the evaluation phase of each course, so as to encourage students to think critically and innovatively. A class (30 students) from an engineering university were invited to test the curricula system. The preliminary results showed that by building the bridge between mechanical curricula and practical application can not only help students better grasp the engineering concepts and principles, but also improve their ability to solve practical engineering problems. To some extent, it provides a reference for solving the current situation of separation between theory and practice in China's higher engineering education. However, the program still needs to be tested on a more general basis to find some other potential problems before a large-scale promotion.