Tron Days: Horizontal Integration and Authentic Learning

Abstract—First year Mechatronics students at the University ofWaterloo consistently do not see the connection between their fundamentalmath and science courses with the practise of engineering.To address this issue, the first year instructors came together tolaunch a two day Hackathon style project for the students calledTron Days. Tron Days featured small warm up problems dealingwith advanced concepts in each of the courses, and big problemsthat drew from all of the first year courses. The challenges onlyhad communication marks associated with them and provided anopportunity for sustained engagement with the concepts. The metricsused to measure the event showed that it was successful at addressingthe desired outcomes, but could be further enhanced to address morematerial.