0Introduction
The Fundamentals of Mechanical Design is an important professional and technical foundation course in engineering colleges and universities [1], which is an important course to train students to understand and master the basic knowledge of machinery and have the preliminary ability of mechanical design, and the course plays a very important role in students’ ability to master various aspects of machinery. The design of teaching (i.e. how to teach well and how to learn well) is the key to the teaching process of the course, and also the key to the cultivation of students’ innovative ability.
At present, most of the mechanical design basic courses in colleges and universities are still based on traditional indoctrination education and theoretical education, most of the students just memorize theoretical knowledge and cannot apply it flexibly, they are not strong in hands-on ability and lack of innovation consciousness, so it is difficult to meet the requirements of innovative talents in enterprises and cannot adapt to the requirements of modern economic construction and engineering technology development. Innovation is the soul of a nation and the internal motivation of a country’s development.
Under the situation of rapid development of scientific and technological revolution and increasingly fierce international competition in the 21st century, it has become a very urgent and important task for higher education in China to cultivate cross-century talents with innovative consciousness and innovation ability , therefore, it is necessary to research and reform the teaching design of basic mechanical design course based on the cultivation of innovation ability.
1 The construction of mechanical design basic teaching design based on the cultivation of innovation ability
Traditional mechanical design basic course teaching design is mainly teaching-centered, that is, teacher-centered, only emphasizing the teacher’s “teaching” and ignoring the students’ “learning”, the teaching design of the course is The teaching design of the course revolves around how to teach, but seldom involves how to promote students’ independent learning, how to cultivate students’ innovative thinking and how to improve students’ innovative ability. In the classroom teaching designed according to this theory, students have few opportunities to actively participate in teaching activities, and most of the time they are in a passive acceptance state, which makes it difficult for students’ initiative, enthusiasm and innovation to play, and is not conducive to the growth of creative talents .
The main characteristics of the teaching design of the basic mechanical design course based on the cultivation of innovative ability are: the teaching design is shifted from teaching to both teaching and learning, highlighting innovation, and the scope of application of teaching design is shifted from single to diversified, and the rational design is shifted to the design that integrates rationality and creativity. The above characteristics can be summarized as: why learn, what to learn, how to learn, and how well to learn. The comparison between the teaching design of the basic mechanical design course based on the cultivation of innovation ability and the traditional teaching design of the course is shown in Table 1.
1.1 Analysis of students
In order to select and organize learning contents, clarify learning objectives, design teaching activities, choose reasonable teaching methods and teaching media and other teaching exogenous conditions, it is necessary to analyze students’ characteristics and summarize their learning habits and learning starting points. It is also necessary to analyze students’ responses to perceived stimuli, to truly “teach according to their abilities”, and to improve the relevance and innovation of teaching.
1.2 Analysis and Determination of Teaching Objectives
The teaching objectives are analyzed and determined from three dimensions: innovative thinking development, ability development and learners’ learning needs, as shown in Figure 1.
1） Cultivation of innovative thinking. Through the study of basic mechanical design course, students’ innovative thinking is cultivated, and then the innovative ability is improved. Innovative thinking mainly includes provoking thinking, divergent thinking, associative thinking, deepening thinking, sublimation thinking and integrated thinking.
2) Cultivation of ability. Through the study of the course, students can be trained to have the ability to design simple mechanical systems, components, the ability to model, analyze and solve mechanical engineering problems and the ability to use a variety of technologies, skills and modern engineering tools in the practice of mechanical engineering.
3) Learning needs analysis. Learning needs is a specific content in teaching design, including the following two aspects: (1) the gap between students’ current learning status and expectations, that is, the gap between students’ current level and the level expected to be reached by learners, i.e. (learning) expected to be reached – (learning) current status = (gap) learning needs; (2) according to the students’ major’s The requirements of the basic mechanical design course, as well as the graduation design and future employment of mechanical design-related knowledge needs? Anchor the poor to provide? The learning needs of students.
1.3 Teaching content design
1） Case teaching. In order to meet the needs of innovative ability cultivation, teaching cases should be introduced in the teaching process. Teaching cases are intuitive, typical and systematic, using examples from life, engineering machinery, common mechanisms or parts in typical machinery to inspire students to understand the relevant content of the course and introduce the content of this class, in which students can discuss with each other and take the initiative to ask questions, thus promoting students’ learning initiative and cultivating innovation consciousness.
2） The main teaching content composition. The teaching content of mechanical design foundation based on the cultivation of innovation ability should be adapted to the goal of personnel training =, the teaching content should fully reflect the cultivation of students’ innovation ability under the premise of meeting the requirements of the syllabus. The design of the main teaching content mainly includes teaching methods, teaching process design and innovative thinking cultivation.
3) Increase the extended knowledge. After explaining the content of the course lecture plan, the content of knowledge expansion should also be added, that is, on the basis of the students’ learning the content of the textbook, the teacher expands some knowledge related to the content of the textbook and the frontier, so as to stimulate students’ interest in learning, develop students’ vision, and cultivate students’ ability to link theory with practice and innovation ability.
1.4 Teaching Strategies
Teaching strategy is a general consideration of the procedures of teaching activities, teaching methods, teaching media and extra-curricular assignments used to accomplish specific teaching objectives. In order to cultivate students’ innovation ability, teachers must take the initiative to conceptualize and develop corresponding teaching strategies, and cultivate students’ innovation consciousness through teaching. The teaching strategy of basic mechanical design based on the cultivation of innovation ability mainly includes the following contents.
1) Teaching method. The teaching method is the activity of teacher-student interaction under the guidance of teaching principles with the help of teaching tools in order to achieve the teaching objectives. In order to cultivate students’ innovation ability, in addition to the traditional teaching methods such as lecture method, discovery teaching method and cooperative learning method, the demonstration method, experiment method and practice method are highlighted.
2) Design of teaching media.
3) Extracurricular work. The extra-curricular assignment is a part of the course where the students are asked to design the relevant content according to the course content after the lecture. The form of extra-curricular homework can improve students’ ability of problem identification, analysis and problem solving, and play an important role in improving students’ engineering practice ability.
1.5 Teaching evaluation
The current method of mechanical design basic course performance assessment has been used for many years, mainly based on examinations, the students’ mastery is assessed by the high or low score of the examinations, which cannot test the students’ practical ability, hands-on ability and innovation ability, so this assessment method can no longer meet the requirements of innovative talents training objectives.
2 Practice of teaching design of mechanical design foundation based on innovation ability cultivation
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2.1 Student analysis and the determination of teaching objectives
The teaching class is welding 131 class, there are 30 students, most of the students come from Heilongjiang Province, so the students’ learning habits and learning starting point is basically the same. The application of dead points in the connecting rod mechanism, for example, for students to play the video of the aircraft landing gear, through the teaching video on the students to learn to reflect the test, the results show that students react similarly to the stimulus from the new knowledge, more than 95% of the class of students have great interest in the content of the connecting rod mechanism, and show a desire to learn the knowledge of the connecting rod mechanism.
The linkage mechanism is a must for welding students and can play a role in the graduation design and employment of the students. Through the study of connecting rod mechanism, students can master the types, characteristics and working principles of connecting rod mechanism based on the understanding of connecting rod mechanism, and can apply the relevant knowledge to the design of connecting rod mechanism. Meanwhile, on the basis of digesting the existing knowledge, students can design new mechanism or combination mechanism, so as to cultivate students’ innovative thinking.
2.2 Teaching content design
Before the formal lecture, the Chebyshev quadruped walking machine is introduced as an application case for teaching, through which the students have a general understanding of the application of the linkage mechanism, and at the same time make the students interested in the content of this chapter, the specific teaching content design is shown in Table 2.
2.3 Teaching strategies
1) Teaching method.
When explaining the content of the linkage mechanism, we demonstrate the small production of the linkage mechanism to make the students interested and deepen their understanding of the chapter content. At the same time, we arrange experiments in this chapter, and students consolidate what they have learned in class by operating, mapping and reassembling the connecting rod mechanism by themselves in the laboratory. Finally, according to the school’s school conditions, we organize students to go to the school’s practical training and innovation base for innovative practice, according to what students have learned and combined with imagination to make new linkage mechanism or combination mechanism, Figure 2 shows the combination mechanism of linkage and gear made by students.
2) Teaching media.
The course applies self-developed multimedia courseware of basic mechanical design. The teaching courseware is mainly developed with authorware as the platform, combined with superstar, format factory, flash and photoshop software, integrating text, pictures, sound and video animation, which is suitable for the teaching theme and properly matched. The courseware contains 8 modules: teaching guide, teaching materials, presentation, electronic lesson plan, answer key, aptitude test, intensive training and mock test, and the homepage of the courseware is shown in Figure 3. Figure 4 shows the change of the type of linkage mechanism controlled by the program in the courseware when teaching this chapter.
The courseware has been used in teaching for two semesters with good results. There are many majors and students who apply this courseware, and nearly 350 non-mechanical students use this courseware in each semester in the school. Since the courseware has a large number of cases, pictures and videos, it greatly mobilizes students’ interest and motivation. In addition, the use of a large number of self-assessment questions and simulation questions has greatly improved students’ mastery of the course content, and the final exam results have been generally improved.
3) Extracurricular major assignments.
According to the content of this chapter, the topic of the assignment is “design a linkage mechanism combined with engineering practice”. There are 30 students in the welding 13-1 class, so they are divided into 5 groups, and then each group chooses a group leader to be responsible for the task details and control the progress to ensure that the assignment can be completed on time. After completing the task, they could discuss the design content in groups, and then each group chose a representative to explain to the class what the group had designed, and finally the teacher made a summary. Through the extra-curricular assignment, students’ collaboration ability is improved and their ability to identify, analyze and solve problems as well as their innovation ability is enhanced.
The teaching practice shows that the teaching design of the basic mechanical design course based on the cultivation of innovation ability has been improved in many aspects compared with the traditional teaching design, as shown in Table 3.
3 Conclusion
In this paper, based on the teaching goal of innovation ability cultivation, with broadening knowledge as the basis, cultivating ability as the main line, improving quality as the premise, cultivating students’ engineering practice ability and innovation ability as the core, making full use of the existing mechanical design basic teaching research achievements, experimental conditions and school conditions of the school to carry out teaching design research and reform, and through the teaching practice fully shows that this study has achieved certain effect, which The multimedia courseware of mechanical design foundation won the first prize of Heilongjiang Multimedia Courseware Competition.
At the same time, due to the improvement of students’ interest in learning, the average score of final examination is 85, which is nearly 10 points higher than the previous one, and the students’ innovative and practical ability and hands-on ability have been improved, and the employment has also achieved good results. The number of students employed in Fortune 500 companies has doubled compared with before, contributing to the university being named as one of the “Top 50 Universities in China for Employment”.