Hands-On Teaching and Entrepreneurship Development.

This paper presents the experiment being conducted in the Electric Circuits II course (ELE1103) at PUC-Rio's Electrical Engineering Department since March 1997. This experiment was held in both the fall and the spring semesters of 1997. The basis for the experiment was concurrent teaching methodology, to which the principles of entrepreneurship development were added. Concurrent teaching methodology includes hands on activities, and this experiment served as a test lab to improve it. Entrepreneurship development is one of the topics suggested by the National Science Foundation (NSF-USA) and by the REENGE Program (CAPES/CNPq/FINEP - Brazil). This topic has been included in the activities of the Scientific and Technological Center (CTC/PUC-Rio). This work presents the results of the experiment and some of the ideas behind it. It is original because it strongly relied on the use of hands on practice after its fundamentals and its consequences were understood. It is a success story because the experiment's objectives were reached. The course in which the experiment was conducted includes a traditional teaching/learning activity. There is a syllabus with a specific topics to be presented in lectures, plus weekly lab sessions. This characteristic of the experiment seems to point to a possible extension to other conventional engineering courses. The paper presents an analysis of the specific characteristics of the rites of passage from the lower to the upper division of electrical Engineering Students at PUC-Rio. The contents of the courses in this transition, as well as the study habits of the students, are discussed. Also included is a brief diagnosis of the situation previous to the experiment, along with remarks and complaints from the instructors of the courses that followed. The major points of the experiment methodology may be summarized as: (1) Relate to the students in a mature manner. The rules of the game were previously stated by the instructors and were followed throughout the course; (2) Stimulate student involvement in the activities by showing a deep involvement on the part of the teachers and instructors; (3) Relate to the students on a very specific and individual basis; (4) Develop a new method of relating concept to experiment by stimulating students to build the concepts (those strongly related to physical situations) as they experiment in the lab; (5) Propose real world problems; (6) Suggest industrial applications and professional quality; (7) Specify the formal leadership for each project team; (8) Request minimum standards for the presentation of projects, for example, for the oral presentation students were expected to use more formal language, dress less causally and include PowerPoint type slide shows, (9) Have teams compete with one another, for example, students were graded according to the performance of each team vis-a-vis all other teams, and (10) Evaluate the results with the use of external referees, some of them from companies active in the market. In the work, the details of the experiment will be discussed. Some generalizations will be suggested. A final evaluation is presented, including comments from students who took the courses. (Author)