New Perspectives in Science Education

How can we prepare the future specialists currently studying in the field of engineering specifically in the area of textiles and clothing for the challenges of Smart Textiles, which is the combination of electronics and textiles, in a competent and target-oriented manner? The objective of the project is to support students in gaining professional action competences specifically for the development of Smart Textiles products. Therefore, a new learning setting and a construction kit is developed. The kit is intended to respond flexibly to the needs of the students and thus allow them to experiment initially in the field of smart textiles and also to anticipate mistakes in order to learn from them and avoid them in the implementation of products. This enables students to actively and sustainably influence product development processes - in order to optimally adapt the tool to the target group, they are actively involved in the development process. To keep the motivation high while dealing with this complex topic, the handling is gamified. Within a teaching-learning arrangement the methods of Design Thinking and EMPAMOS (www.empamos.de) were used and combined respectively evaluated with the tools ‘participant observation’ and ‘learning reflections’. The development process is based on the user-oriented creativity method of Design Thinking, in which the needs of future users are of key significance. Therefore, in a clearly structured process, Design Thinking classically goes through three phases in the problem space and three phases in the solution space. In addition, the Empamos method from the research project Empirical Analysis of Motivating Game Elements, which includes a toolbox designed to be used as a creative thinking tool to motivate learning and work environments, was used. It includes, among others, a set of cards on Game Design Misfits and a set on Game Design Elements which were used by the students for the analysis and to foster their ideas. Within a workshop the students had three tasks: 1. to conceptualize a product idea for the field of Smart Textiles 2. to document the weaknesses of the existing construction kit for the implementation of their idea into a prototype and 3. to realize a gamified task or a small learning game with given Smart Textiles components. An insight into the process and the results of the work with the Empamos Cards and the design thinking, will be given. For example, some of the fascinating individual prototypes, which were built using a wide variety of materials, such as for example, sticky notes, strings, building blocks, plasticine, etc., will be explained and best practice experiences whilst working with students with innovative tools will be shared.

Keywords: Engineering, Design Thinking, Gamification, Smart Textiles, Empamos, Motivation