Proyecto Transversal del Ciclo Básico de Ingeniería: Una Experiencia de Articulación Curricular Desde las Competencias

Published in: Engineering for a Smarter Planet: Innovation, ITC, and Computational Tools for Sustainable Development: Proceedings of the 9th Latin American and Caribbean Conference for Engineering and Technology
Date of Conference: August 3-5, 2011
Location of Conference: Medellin, Colombia
Authors: Lyda Peña Paz
Juan Manuel López Ayala
Carlos Fernando Vega Barona
Darío Esteban Recalde Morillo
Refereed Paper: #277

Abstract

The Universidad Autonoma de Occidente has a solid Engineering School with nine programs. For the School is very important the basic training of its students because this gives them a structured thought and many of the professional skills they need. The School curriculum includes the basic cycle engineering, composed by three subjects: Introduction to Engineering 1, Introduction to Engineering 2 and Basic design, which develop the basic skills of engineers in an incremental and evolutionary way (as a spiral). Some innovations had been implemented in these subjects but the students still do not understand the relationship between them. This work presents a project that involves teams of students from each subject to work collaboratively in the creation of problem situation’s solutions. The project includes problem identification, project planning and conceptual design of the solution. In order to complete this project, each teacher defines six groups of students whose results are given to other groups in the following subject to continue the project. At the end, the students understand better the relation between the subjects, improving their communication and teamwork skills. However, to generate meaningful conclusions other interventions are needed, used instruments and synchronization of the project’s stages should be improved. Nevertheless, the results allow confirming that this kind of collaborative project facilitates the student’s training process and helps them develop their professional and personal skills.