The rise of immediacy culture, emphasizing instant gratification, has led to students disengaging from taking ownership of their learning, fostering passive environments. This study addresses the issue by building students' confidence in autonomous learning through strategies that cultivate intrinsic motivation. The research aimed to assess students' motivationconfidence and satisfaction-in self-directed learning. An activity was implemented in a sophomore-level Statistics and Experimental Design (DOE) course to promote student-led learning. Teams of 4-5 engineering students designed trivia video games using Game Builder Garage (GBG) on the Nintendo Switch (NS) over one week. These games, featuring DOE-based questions, were intended to help peers prepare for the final exam. Each student generated 10 questions throughout the course, with teams selecting the best ten for their games. The activity culminated in a peer-reviewed competition and a live trivia match. Student motivation was evaluated using an adapted version of Keller's IMMS questionnaire in a PRE-POST experimental design ($\mathrm{n}=55$) analyzed via paired t-tests (5 % confidence level). The findings indicated a marked improvement in confidence, while satisfaction remained unchanged. Both confidence and satisfaction are two of the four dimensions of motivation outlined in Keller's ARCS model, which forms the basis for the Keller's IMMS questionnaire used in this study. This gamification approach-having students create, not just play, educational games-fostered ownership, engagement, and responsibility, enhancing confidence in learning independently, even in technical subjects like DOE.

In recent years we have enthusiastically seen how the number of efforts to reduce the gender gap has increased. Although there is extensive research confirming the success of initiatives such as mentoring for women in STEM areas, a high percentage of those who take part in leading and managing this type of initiative are women (students, teachers, managers), and only 20% of the participants are male students and teacher, according to records of participation of these initiatives in a private university in Mexico. An anonymous electronic survey applied to male professors and students from the university willing to share with us their opinions. According to the evaluation instrument, the results were divided into the impact that taking part or not in an initiative has had to reduce the gender gap or not with respect to its gender equity perspective. Although positive results of the impact of participating in an initiative that seeks to achieve gender equity in the STEM areas in the School of Engineering and Sciences of Tecnologico de Monterrey are shown in the analyzed sample, there is also information on a small percentage that argues that they are not interested. to participate in this type of initiatives and whose perspective is that currently men and women have the same opportunities. In the same way, a point of attention is that one of the reasons for those who have not participated in any gender equality initiative in STEM areas is because the programs they have known only involve women. The purpose of this research is to measure the impact of gender equity initiatives on the perspective that men have on the issue comparing opinions of those who have had the opportunity to take part with those who have not taken part in any of them.

Digital education has reached enormous advances and acceptance in the last decade. COVID 19 has triggered a boom in the digital education implementation. Those courses that never had been delivered in a digital format, suddenly were forced to be prepared and presented as digital education. The nature of different courses might facilitate this new reality, depending if they are theoretical, numerical or mixed. This paper has evaluated a set of characteristics deployed in different engineering courses transformed into digital courses, depending on its nature. On the other hand, this analysis had a focus on the women participation in engineering courses and their evaluations of such digital course’s characteristics. The main purpose of the present paper is to answer the question of what characteristics within the course methodology design, works and are evaluated better by students. A survey was designed and applied to the 87% of the Industrial and Systems Engineering program population in Tecnologico de Monterrey, Sonora Mexico. Data was statistically analyzed to find if there were any difference between female and male opinions about the course characteristics and within each gender in each kind of course. Also, a correlation analysis was made to identify how the elements influenced each other and if they should be combined depending on the desired result. An additional analysis took place to identify the level of participation of female and male students before and during pandemic time. Findings reveal interesting coincidences and differences in evaluating some of those digital course’s characteristics depending on the gender of students and course nature, such as women participation and the differences in perception of competitiveness among women and men. Some of these findings are: 1) In mixed subjects, male students identify a higher academic environment that encourages more competitiveness than female students. 2) Another finding is that men seem to have greater motivation to attend class sessions in numerical subjects. 3) Among female students a negative correlation between the frequency of the instructor request of a final reflection analysis of the session with considering a competitiveness academic environment. 4) Talking about mixed courses, all female students evaluated with the highest score in the question about motivation to be present in the session and the identification of moments and activities that allowed them to share opinions. To reinforce women participation in Industrial and Systems Engineering digital courses, those identified characteristics shall be included and developed in the course methodology design.

Higher education needs to evolve and innovate to prepare students for future challenges and, especially, for developing the competencies to meet the needs of industry. One of the main considerations underlying this achievement is how to improve long-term knowledge retention. Research projects often involve experiential learning; this paper discusses how Semestre i, a project/challenge-based learning initiative, improved the students’ long-term retention of knowledge. Having participated in this project for two years, the students involved showed a higher level of knowledge retention compared to the students who participated in the traditional educational model. This was validated by a comparison of student grades obtained in the official national undergraduate exam.