The PneuDrive Challenge team visited the University of Johannesburg Mechanical Engineering faculty earlier this month, where students under Professor Japie van Wyk listened and interacted well with the presenters.
The University of Johannesburg has shown its commitment to the competition by making it part of the design curriculum. The PneuDrive Challenge Design project will count 50% towards the students final examination mark in their design module. “This is great news,” says SEW-Eurodrive marketing manager, Rene Rose. “After two years of running the competition, our challenge is still to get universities to buy into the educational and learning value that it can provide. However, we know that the design of curricula activities, subjects, time tables and the formal assessment of learning content is not an easy thing to balance.”
The PneuDrive team – (L to R): Brian Abbott and Ernst Smith of Festo, Philip van Rensburg, Norman Maleka and Rene Rose of SEW-Eurodrive
An important concern raised by some mechanical engineering students was that because they focus on a specific engineering discipline in their studies, they do not have sufficient knowledge of electrical or mechatronic engineering to be able to compete effectively. Van Wyk says that this is an important concern which should encourage students to move beyond engineering theory and to acknowledge the importance of learning about group dynamics. “How students interact with each other in a team activity is an element of life that is seldom taught formally, yet these skills play a large part in business success and the development of careers. This hidden learning opportunity associated with the PneuDrive Challenge raises an interesting spin-off and adds to the objectives of the competition.”
The team supported this: “A wealth of knowledge and experience is available from both SEW-Eurodrive and Festo. Students need to carefully consider how to ‘pick the brains’ of people who are passionate and experienced in drive engineering, pneumatics, electronics, project engineering and the viable marketing of business ideas,” concludes Rose.
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