**3. Active Learning Activities**

To highlight the potential of GIM for teaching, different activities performed using it are described in this section. A software can be used to complement and reinforce the complex theoretical concepts of subjects in mechanism and machine science. On the one hand, during academic courses, students have practical sessions in which different exercises are solved using the software. On the other hand, some active learning activities are developed during the seminars for students to enhance their ability to design and analyze different mechanical systems or structures. These activities, commonly known as problem-based learning (PBL), focus on applications. In this way, the students learn to approach problems in engineering.

#### *3.1. Practical Teaching Support Sessions*

During an academic course, practical sessions using GIM software are offered to students. In these sessions, lab groups of a maximum of 25 people are created. Initially, the teacher explains in a step-by-step manner the main modules of the GIM software and different options that are implemented. Then, a report template containing some proposed exercises is given to the students. They work independently on their computers, solve the exercises using GIM, and update the report in the Moodle platform for the course once they finish it. Depending on the subject, several problems can be proposed. Some examples are as follows:


During these practical sessions, the teacher answers the students' questions. Once the students have updated their reports to the virtual platform, the teacher reviews them to provide feedback to each student.

#### *3.2. Problem-Based Learning*

It is sometimes challenging to capture the interest of students when introducing complex concepts during teaching. Thus, to show them the relation between theory and practice, some case studies based on applications have been developed during seminars. This has helped motivate them to explore different ideas and exercise their creativity [20].

In general, the methodology followed is as follows: The teacher, at the beginning of the session, explains the case study (the initial data, design criteria, and relevant hints); then, the students work in groups to solve the proposed problem by combining the necessary theoretical developments with the tools offered by GIM. Depending on the difficulty of the case study, this task can be completed during the seminar or finished in the students' study time. They can then update the report to the Moodle platform within an established period.

A wide variety of practical examples can thus be approached: designing mechanisms to perform certain specific tasks, analyzing the motion of robots and parallel manipulators common in the industry, designing and computing efforts in structures based on trusses, and vibration analysis of simple mechanical systems.

To illustrate the example of a case study proposed during these PBL activities, Figure 20 shows the rooftop of the San Mamés football stadium in Bilbao (Spain). The stadium is located in front of our university and is very well known to students. The objective of this PBL, which is among the activities designed through an educational innovation project

in our Department of Mechanical Engineering (Ref: PIE2012/14), was to tackle the static problem of the truss that conformed to the structure of the rooftop. Figure 20a shows a floor plan of the truss of the rooftop, and Figure 20b shows a result obtained by a student. This consisted of reactions under specific loads.

**Figure 20.** Example of PBL: (**a**) Rooftop of the football stadium in Bilbao (Spain), (**b**) Results.

#### *3.3. Self-Learning and Self-Checking*

The GIM software is used in practical sessions or seminars that teachers have developed as part of courses that they teach, and any student can install it for free. The website of our research group, COMPMECH Research Group, features a simple user manual to start using the software and many video tutorials to solve different problems with GIM.

Students are encouraged to practice with GIM and make the most of it. Note that the software can act as a self-checking assistant for students. Indeed, students usually take advantage of the software by solving many of the exercises from exams from previous years. They can verify whether their results, obtained by applying the theoretical procedure, coincide with those generated by GIM. In this way, they can identify errors that they made and enhance their skills.

#### **4. GIM in Universities and Companies**

The main channel for the dissemination of GIM is the direct download from our COMPMECH research group webpage. In Table 1, detailed data for downloads of the software to date are presented. The number of institutions adopting GIM has increased over the last few years to more than 500 per year. This software can have a significant positive impact not only on universities and educational centers all over the world, but also on companies and research centers related with innovation and research activities. GIM has also been cited and used in publications related to education and the development of virtual labs [21–25].


**Table 1.** GIM download data.

Figure 21 shows the use of the GIM software throughout the world. The countries marked in red are those in which downloads of the software have been registered since 2015.

Tutorials and lectures have been organized to educate the academic community about GIM. In the scope of the IFToMM (International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science) community, we can cite as instance the tutorial held during the 14th IFToMM World Congress in 2015 in Taipei, and lectures scheduled during IFToMM summer schools (Timisoara 2014 and Palermo 2016). Moreover, in the contexts of the Erasmus + internships and visits to universities, the capabilities of GIM have been presented. This is exemplified by lectures given at the Odessa National Polytechnic University (Ucrania) in 2017, and the presentation given at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2019. GIM has been also presented in educational conferences, such as ISEMMS (International Symposium on the Education in Mechanism and Machine Science) [26] and INTED (International Technology, Education and Development Conference) [27].

However, a key factor exhibiting the usefulness and interest of the software presented in this paper is the feedback from students that have used it. In an anonymous survey conducted via Google Forms at the end of the academic year 2017–2018 featuring 176 students of the Faculty of Engineering in Bilbao, after having received two lectures (4 h) on the use of the program, 90% stated that the software had been useful for them to better understand the subjects studied (machine theory and applied mechanics). They also highlighted its simplicity of use (91%) and assigned an average score of 3.7/5 to the entire *GIM experience*.

Recently, in January 2020, an online voluntary and anonymous Google Forms survey was sent to the people that have downloaded the latest version of GIM since September 2019. This survey collected 81 responses. The users' profile is shown in Figure 22. As it can be seen, the highest percentage of users is linked to the educational sector as a teacher or a student. This confirms the interest of GIM software as an educational tool. In any case, GIM is also used in companies and for research activities.

In relation with the use of GIM as a complementary tool for students, the main results are depicted in Figure 23. It is shown that they use the software not only during the lectures, but also in their self-study time. The students rate the usefulness of GIM as an educational tool with an average rate of 3.9 (scale 0–5).

**Figure 23.** Use of GIM in the learning process.

The use of GIM by professors/teachers is shown in Figure 24. As expected, it has more impact during the practical sessions than in the theoretical lectures. The professors/teachers score the usefulness of GIM as a complement to the lectures with 4.2 (scale 0–5).

The ease of use of GIM is rated by all GIM users with 3.4 (scale 0–5). The score of the overall GIM experience is 3.9 (scale 0–5). Finally, only 6% of the users state that they do not intend to download a future version of GIM. The 68% of the users are sure they will download it and 26% are not sure.

Regarding the specific comments of the users, the negative comments focus on the lack of detailed tutorials for learning how to use all the features offered by the software: "Could really benefit from a comprehensive tutorial", "Lacking resources to fully utilize all features", and "Please provide a complete tutorial". We agree with these comments; the current tutorial is quite brief and the program has much more capabilities than the ones explained in it. We will enhance it by incorporating all the options of GIM.

**Figure 24.** Use of GIM in the teaching process.

On the other side, the majority of the comments emphasizes the educational and design capabilities of GIM, such as: "Excellent app to help me understand my course", "Very interesting software that lets you think directly in the core of the mechanism", "Plan to have it as an integrated part in my lectures", and "Wonderful. It is a very effective tool for engineering students and designers".

#### **5. Conclusions**

This paper explored the impact of the GIM software as a supporting tool for teaching university courses on mechanism and machine science. The authors reviewed the potential of the software for modeling planar and spatial linkages, and for carrying out kinematic and dynamic analyses, as well as dimensional synthesis. Although GIM also offers additional, advanced features for PhD Students and other researchers, they are not presented here as they are beyond the scope of the paper.

GIM is being used in many universities as a powerful and valuable tool for boosting students' learning throughout the academic year. The learning activities presented in the paper show the versatility of GIM and consist of practical and problem-based learning sessions. It is also worth noting the positive effects of the use of the software observed in students in terms of increased motivation for working independently. The feedback received from the students from a survey on the use of GIM reinforced these conclusions.

The impact of GIM was quantified by monitoring direct downloads both from universities (or other educational institutions) and companies or research centers. These downloads have increased annually. In addition, dissemination activities have been organized to present GIM in summer schools, educational conferences, and during lectures in several universities. GIM is constantly evolving to incorporate more capabilities to respond to the demands of different users.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at https://www.mdpi.com/article/ 10.3390/app11177850/s1. The three videos referred to in the paper showing the kinematics and dynamics simulations are available.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, V.P.; methodology, E.M.; software, E.M.; validation, M.U.; formal analysis, V.P.; investigation, E.M.; resources, V.P.; data curation, M.U.; writing—original draft preparation, E.M., M.U., V.P., and A.H.; writing—review and editing, M.U.; visualization, M.U.; supervision, A.H.; project administration, A.H.; funding acquisition, A.H. and V.P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Spanish Government Project, MINECO/FEDER, UE (grant number DPI2015-67626-P), Departamento de Educación, Política Lingüística y Cultura, Regional Government of the Basque Country (grant number IT949-16) and University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU (grant number PIE2012/14).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

## **References**

