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L’objectiu d’aquest projecte és la realització d’un material docent innovador per a l’ambientalització curricular en les àrees docents de l’Enginyeria de Sistemes, Automàtica i Informàtica Industrial. La primera part del projecte ha consistit en l’edició i publicació del llibre Automàtica i Sostenibilitat, d’Edicions UPC, mentre que la segona part ha consistit en la creació d’uns recursos pedagògics on-line penjats en la web MODEL.UPC.EDU i que són un recull de models matemàtics i la seva implementació amb Java per ser usats en les pràctiques docents d’assignatures de modelització i simulació de sistemes dinàmics. Aquests recursos pedagògics de marcat caràcter sostenibilista poden ser exportats a altres disciplines del món tecnològic.

Introducing students in the world of the experimentation has always been a complicated task, since the students are not familiar with the new work place. They have to handle different measuring devices, interiorize the philosophy of the experimentation, measure and estimate uncertainty, graph data, and finally write a report about the results of the experimentation. Students do not know this whole process, and although they delight to do practical work in the laboratory, they do not feel confident of carrying out a proper work. In order to achieve so, a multimedia material has been elaborated, with an introduction to the laboratory and the experimental techniques which require the implication and the autonomy from the student. The outcome of this process -students setting the established protocol in practice and achieving competences- has been clearly superior to that reached in previous years.

Starting with our work on organizational redesign in different Colombian organizations, we have advanced in the concepts of Learning Communities, Shared and Permanent Learning, Flexible Organizational Structure, Participative Design, among others ideas. These concepts are a fundamental part of the TESO (Systems Theory in Organizations) approach developed and implemented by Ernesto Lleras in different Participative Organization Redesign processes. From this approach we attempt to tackle organizational issues taking into account the cultural background of domination inherited from our Colombian colonial tradition, which we consider to be detrimental to the effectiveness of Colombian organizations. Through the TESO approach we aim to promote an organizational learning focused on two main elements: the strengthening of people's autonomy and responsibility capabilities, and in this way enable the emergence of autonomous and flexible organizational structures. We consider that the strengthening of both organizational and personal capabilities will enable the emergence of a permanent and shared learning environment that is what we call ‘Learning Community’.

The Belbin method has been applied at the education in Arctic Technology in Greenland as a way of improving the student s teamwork abilities. The feedback from the students is that Belbin is a meaningful and relevant tool and they are very engaged during the teamwork exercises. They get a theoretical approach to teamwork and a language in which they can talk about their own and each others strengths and weaknesses. There are indications that it has positive effect on their subsequent teamwork.

During their first week of engineering studies at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées Toulouse, France, 300 first year students are introduced to Project/problem Based Learning thanks to an introductory module (PBL0) which is designed to be both technical and fun. In order to recognise and valorise this involvement, INSA has created a “Pedagogy module” which is validated by 3 credits as part of their engineering course. The module adopts an active learning approach. During the module, the student-tutors engage in activities which contribute to the development of transversal competencies required in the engineering profession but also the ability to reflect on one’s actions in order to progress in one’s learning.

This paper is based on a hands-on session proposed at ALE 2009 Conference (Active Learning for Engineering Education). It presents a teaching practice used at Ecole Centrale Paris (ECP) to foster engineering students’ leadership and innovation skills and to help them going through major paradigm shifts. Considering a class as a human complex system, teachers work in a posture of facilitators or coaches who orchestrate a learning process. Instead of transmitting knowledge as traditional professors, they focus on the relationships in the classroom and the experience emerging from them.

This paper presents an outline of the evaluation of the active learning taking place in an engineering course1 in the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. The course intends to contribute to the development of the innovative attitude of Systems and Computing Engineering and Industrial Engineering students (average age is 20), through the development of competences such as: - Engineering teamwork - Effective communication in engineering processes - Engineering systems design - Management of engineering projects Throughout the course the students work in interdisciplinary teams (5 students each). Each team has the following of the teachers (One Computing Engineering professor and one Industrial engineering professor) and one member of the entrepreneurs staff (ICT leaders). Each team should propose and develop an engineering project based on ICT innovation. This course is inspired on the CDIO proposal (Conceive, Design, Implement, Operate), with a particular emphasis in one additional first step: the Observe step. The OCDIO steps (observation, conception, design, implementation and operation) of the project are developed during two academic semesters. At the end of this process, the teams present their project in a fair that’s open for the business public and in a contest. The winners of the contest continue the next year with the implementation of the project [1]. So far, 20 groups have participated each semester and there have been 4 winning teams (20 students). We tried to assess the teamwork evolution along the process and its relation with the innovation attitude. In order to achieve this, we’ve had gathered information from the entrepreneurs, teachers and students who, through observation tools, have allowed us to define indicators related to teamwork. For the analysis we have relied on the different evaluation instances (oral presentations, papers, the fair, and the contest), the tools we have designed (surveys), and video recordings of different processes.

In PBL, the quality of the problem-situation has the greatest impact on group work and the investment and motivation of the students in the group. A very important aspect of the situation is that it comforts one’s own misconception. It is only when one runs up against one’s own misconception that one can hope to truly internalize a new concept. Tintin is a bottomless source of situations that can be used to confront students with their misconceptions.

The obtained experience in the active and the autonomous learning tasks execution in the teaching of the subject: Reinforced Concrete Structures and Devices Construction, of the career of Technical Architecture by the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña (Politechnical University of Catalonia, UPC), is presented. This article gives continuity to the work performed in the scene of educational improvement developed in Barcelona, and framed inside the European Higher Education Area [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It intends, therefore, to contribute with the current descriptive tendency in the learning condition applied in this subject.

The Physics laboratory is usually the main place where our students of engineering approach to the physical daily reality, from the technological and the scientific point of view, through experiments and motivating demonstrations. Thinking of those students that can not follow an established schedule of attendance to the classroom, an innovative educational material has been created, which is based on digital filming of the experiments that nowadays are carried out in our real Physics laboratory. The objective is to minimize the lack of acquisition of some abilities associated with the real experimentation, by means of the use of virtual experiments and by working others individual competences by a streaming video. The filming is accompanied by some tutorials that introduce the experiment and illustrate the associated theoretical concepts, together with some simulations. Evaluation and self-evaluation tests are also available to monitor the student’s learning. Anyone can find all the material in the webpage: http://www.epsem.upc.edu/~practiquesfisica/ After putting these materials into practice, we have carried out a survey in which the students compare the real and the virtual experimentation systems and to ask their opinion about the quality of the generated material for two different experiments. The answers of the students encourage us to produce more material of this kind and to improve the autonomous learning of our future students of engineering.

In general, our society has no real views on or has an inappropriate idea about what engineering means. Everything related to pollution, bad usage of natural resources and human endeavours is connected to engineering. Modern society accepts the positive achievements that engineering has given us, but some people continue to hold a “negative opinion” related to technology. It is important to show and to explain to the general public that engineering generates many benefits to society. Communication is essential in our society. The Spanish programme “Ciencia en Acción” offers the possibility to link up with a general audience which has a positive approach to science, technology and engineering. This project began ten years ago from a group of scientist and engineers working in CERN, ESA and ESO who promoted a first meeting in Geneva, at CERN headquarters in order to give a message to European society by means of teachers and students. The main objectives of “Ciencia en Acción” are: • Finding new ideas to make science and technology attractive to the population • Pointing out the international character of science and technology • Promoting the interest in science for educators and students • Involving research in scientific and technologic communication activities • Showing the importance of science for progress and welfare in general. Our society continually needs more engineers and more from the engineers. If we want to change mind sets, we need to explain the applications and help the use of engineering to increase the quality of life of everybody in a sustainable manner. If we want to communicate successfully the advantages of engineering we must get close up to our audience. What are the facts that people remember best? Without doubt, the answer is “the facts involving positive emotions”. If we feel a passion related to some aspects of technology, we will remember it and we will add a positive connotation to engineering. This relationship will stay with the person for some time and it will be a cord that will not be broken easily. It is good that the experiences, and in special the first experiences with engineering, are exciting. If a child had a good feeling in the school when “making a device” with other children, he/she will continue with this positive feeling in the future. We must get the students to feel emotive in building simple devices or in solving some problems in the technological framework! School classes should offer some examples of this kind of experiences. We should use all the above mentioned strategies such as causing surprise, enthusiasm, encouraging the participation of everybody and to feel technology much more approach. These strategies can be presented in the “Ciencia en Acción” programme in order to show them to all the educational, scientific and technological communities. “Ciencia en Acción” programme is open to all the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries and all the participants can present their contributions in any of the official languages in Spain and Portugal. The CSIC (Spanish National Research Council), INTA (National Institute for Aerospace Technology), the RSEF (Spanish Royal Physical Society), the SGE (Spanish Geologist Society) and the UNED (Spanish Open University) have annually organised “Ciencia en Acción” in order to increase the quality of science and technology communication and to promote innovation within science teaching. In the last edition of “Ciencia en Acción”, the Portuguese program “CienciaViva” (Portuguese Science Programme) has been integrated in the organisers group. This program moves Science and Engineering to the street by involving general audiences in both these areas. “Ciencia en Acción” increases in importance every year. The final event of the last edition grouped together about 15,000 people in two days. “Ciencia en Acción” is integrated in the international program “Science on Stage” organised by the EIROforum (the CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research), the EFDA (European Fusion Development Agreement), the EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory), the ESA (European Space Agency), the ESO (European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere), the ESRF (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility) and the ILL (Institute Laue-Langevin) with the financial support of the European Union. In the most recent editions of “Ciencia en Acción”, a specific category has been promoted in order to bring the general public closer to “Science, Engineering and Values”. Several proposals were presented within this new category: from university departments, from engineering teams, and from NGOs coming from Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries. This modality is sponsored by a chair linked to the Technical University of Catalonia and the leading electric company ENDESA showing that people involved in the management of public and private entities can reach agreement about the importance of the previously mentioned topics.

Service-learning is a method of teaching, learning and reflecting that combines academic classroom curriculum with meaningful service throughout the community. As a teaching methodology, it falls under the philosophy of experiential education. More specifically, it integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, encourage lifelong civic engagement, and strengthen communities for the common good. Technology for everybody (TXT) is an association of people from the computer science and telecommunication schools at UPC. The main goal is to share our knowledge in Information and Communication Technology to communities that may benefit. In the last few years we have seen how technology has changed our everyday life and has became an inner part of a modern society. Lack of access to this knowledge enlarges the distance between communities. In this context, people in TXT aim to narrow the gap by providing technical knowledge to nongovernmental social institutions where this information could be useful. Another important task for TXT is building student's community awareness of international and local cooperation. The association tries to engage students into taking civil responsibilities, at the same time their learning experience are enriched. To that aim TxT runs the reuse workshop (among other projects); this initiative is managed by the Center of Cooperation and Development (CCD) the Technical University in Catalonia (UPC) and the association Technology for Everybody (TXT). It is a hands-on session where participants learn how to repair a computer.

Higher education is in a process of changing conditions. Many of these changes concerns teaching and learning and the challenges both teachers and students need to be able to meet in the near future. This paper deals with teacher role and actions needed to meet the students´ needs and desires in order to create effective learning environments and course design supporting active learning among the students. There is a need to share teaching and learning experiences, to have a continuing dialogue and to work in the direction of offering students active learning possibilities and good learning, both face-to-face and in virtual learning environments. Using flexible learning, digital media and computer-mediated communication are, among other parameters, identified as important ingredients in creating active learning environments to students.

This paper aims to present a strategy evolution heads to build the ability of system thinking of industrial engineering students. The initial strategy starts with a pilot test, which provides tools to observe students’ performance with some active learning activities. With this experience, the strategy increased the contents of this exercise by making more pleasant the building of the system distinction. The redesign of the strategy included a tool to verify the construction of the competency through absolute improving and explain the improving from lineal to system thinking.

We are offering a course on Calculus. The contents of this course are adapted to the contents of a Calculus subject in any Engineering high degree or scientific Bachelor. But there is something that makes this course different from others. Not only do we offer a book with all the theory concepts of the subject, but also a digital version of the book with interactive exercises and laboratories. We have developed a course on Moodle with all the theory as well as with a great variety of 2D and 3D pictures and graphics. There are also many exercises which are offered in a random way in order to evaluate and autoevaluate the course. The platform Moodle allows, on the one hand, that the professors make a personal course for their subject adapting the contents in which they are interested (therefore we offer a wide range of difficulty, including from easy practice exercises and concepts taught in technical degrees until the pure mathematical concepts taught in a Mathematics M.Sc. degree. On the other hand, the student can learn 24-hours a day in the specific topic or field he wants and can learn the theory concepts as well as practice with the different tests and exercises offered. The laboratories that you can find in the virtual course want to help students to understand the very conceptual contents and therefore illustrate examples of the application of theorems or properties. Both the students and the teachers can work a lot on the course and so get better and better results. The material is high motivating and therefore higher results are easy obtained. A virtual contact between teachers and students (or even among students) is always available through forums or chats. All this possibilities are easily negotiated by Moodle with the interactive support offered by the mathematical software Wiris.

We present here research for deriving a collaborative learning situation which is not base don a Project or problem. The method mainly consists in working in small teams (4 or 5 students) in order to debate on a lesson which has been previously studied individually (as homework) by each student. Coupled with a classical exercises usually solved within the team, this method appears to be very efficient, motivating for the students and well adapted to any subject, including those often considered as difficult to be studied in active PBL, such as mathematics.

Foreign students that come for a short stay usually need a cultural adaptation process due mainly to lacks in language skills and cultural differences. These facts involve that some alternative methods have to be developed in order to optimize the short time of the stay to achieve efficiently the knowledge objectives. This work showed an active learning experience applied at the ESAB-UPC at the spring semester of 2008. We can point that the use of active learning in research work that cover different disciplines could be a useful strategy for integrating students from other countries.

Foreign students that come for a short stay usually need a cultural adaptation process due mainly to lacks in language skills and cultural differences. These facts involve that some alternative methods have to be developed in order to optimize the short time of the stay to achieve efficiently the knowledge objectives. This work showed an active learning experience applied at the ESAB-UPC at the spring semester of 2008. We can point that the use of active learning in research work that cover different disciplines could be a useful strategy for integrating students from other countries.

The debate, between different participants, in that there are requested those who they compete for a working place that they defend an idea. There is valued his (her) capacity of persuasion, his (her) fluency of speech, his (her) degree of adequacy to the companions and other aspects. The debate has been prepared for a additive compounds, a subject from Food Technology. The students have defended the positions with valid arguments (the same ones that were in use previously in the exhibition on the part of the professorship on having given these topics). It is a good skill to face up to themes with contradictory scientific information.

In this paper we present a description and analysis of an activity held in the Mathematics courses in Engineering at the Universidade de Caxias do Sul. The research was planned taking into account requirements for the training of engineers. Analysis of activity indicates that major powers can be developed through active and significative learning strategies. Students who agreed to participate in the activity "Applications of Mathematics in Engineering" show, with their work, opportunities to run, successfully, the path between the "do" and "understand." These skills are related to the steps of the model of active and significative learning, proposed, and are discussed in the analysis of the works presented.

The objective of a research training process, from the learning perspective, is to acquire a set of basic competences that translate into a high level of professional and technical maturity. The use of a portfolio as a practical tool can help in this process that spans from the collection of information to the shaping of ideas. In this paper we present a practical materialization of the portfolio, a research-oriented example, together with the perception the student gets out of this practice. In conclusion, being successful in such practices is not straightforward. However, the right combination of persistence, rigorousness and feedback, help speeding up the process.

Background: e-status is a web-based tool able to generate different statistical exercices and to provide immediate feed-back to students´ answers. Although the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is widely extended in undergraduate education, there are few studies formally evaluating its learning effects. Method: all the students (121) from a dentistry introductory statistical course were randomly assigned to use the tool with one of two sets of 6 problems. The exam includes questions related with topics covered by both types of problems. Exam evaluator was masked to the problems set. Results: 94 students used the tool, solving more than 1400 exercises over six weeks. Providing e status exercises to students has a learning effect of 0.96 points (95% CI from 0.20 to 1.72) in a ten points scale. Among those 94 students who employed e status, effect size was 1.27 (0.35 to 2.19). Conclusion: providing e-status exercises to students has a direct effect on learning statistical mechanical operations. Further effects on higher cognitive levels still to be explored. It is feasible to formally assess the learning effect of an innovative tool.