INTRODUCTION OF THE PROBLEM BASED LEARNING TO MECHANICAL ENGINEERING CURRICULA

Although the technical learning has a long and succ essful tradition in Brno, new trends must be accepted to cope with the needs of modern industrial demands. From the communication with our industrial partners and graduates we registered serious drawbacks of contemporary educational system leading to low competency of our students. To cope with this situation, an innovatio n of curricula in engineering areas of Applied computer science, Mechatronics, Engineering design, Robotics and Engineering mechanics and biomechanics is prepared. The key point of the innovation is the introduction of Problem Based Learning (PBL) into the above mentioned subjects. Main idea of PBL is shifting the educational process fro m the "learning by hearing" to the "learning by doing" mode. In the paper we describe our experience with PBL introduction as a part of a running project funded by the European Social Fund.