Competences development and significative learning through engineering design competition

First engineering and science formation units (blocks) of Tec21 competences-based model [1], defined by Tecnologico de Monterrey, include students solving a real challenge supported by knowledge obtained in modules on mathematics, physics, and computing. A new challenge "Design, construction and modeling of a water-powered rocket" was proposed for the F1007B "Modeling in Engineering with Conservation Laws" block. This challenge involves designing, modeling and construction of a rocket, powered by a jet of water due to the pressure of a hand pump. Students compete in teams to achieve the greatest distance with their rockets. The educational intention of this challenge is to enhance student learning experience by (1) Covering many more topics of Physics that can been applied by students (2) Improve students grades and professor evaluation, (3) Increasing the use of technology by incorporating the Tracker program for video analysis, (4) Enabling comparison of real results with those obtained through MATLAB modeling, and (5) Fostering enthusiasm among students by facilitating teams’ competition within the same class and even among different campuses. Considering the analysis made, it was observed that the water rocket contest helped most of the students to better understand the concepts of Physics included in this block and in the previous block, F1006B "Modeling the Movement in Engineering". The topics in this unit include the Principle of conservation of energy, the Principle of conservation of lineal momentum, Bernoulli’s Principle, Projectile motion and Air friction. A large percentage of students consider that this activity was good for using technological tools such as Matlab (72%) or Tracker (84%) and to compare theory with reality. A good number of students believe that this challenge helped them develop and implement solutions, demonstration of operation of engineering systems and devices, written language, and scientific thinking competences. It can be concluded that this rocket contest challenge is a good educational innovation since it incorporates a change in the materials, methods, contents and contexts involved in the formation unit.