Abstract:

There is no better way to motivate our students on the technical content of our subjects than provoking them emotional impacts oriented towards making them realize that what they are going to learn can make a difference in the world. Empowering our students by letting them know that applying their engineering knowledge can solve a serious problem of our days or an injustice of our actual societies. Typically, engineering university degrees have been focused on teaching design procedures and rigorous technical contents in every subject but not taking into account most of the time the effect of those actions on society nor on the environment where they are implemented.

The 2030 Agenda through its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has brought us an unrivaled window opportunity to reach the hearth or our students, and has become a powerful driver with increasing presence and visibility, since there will be an unquestionable convergence between the actions of the current students (future professionals) and the achievement of the SDGs.

University may have a fundamental role to achieve the compliance of the SDG through:
- Exemplary – University serves as a model for how to support, adopt and implement the SDGs in governance, management policies and university culture.
- Education and training of those current students, future responsible for implementing actions that will impact the SDGs achievement.
- Generation of knowledge and innovative ideas for the SDGs achievement.

However, there is still much work to be done in order to integrate and make visible the 2030 Agenda and its 17 SDGs in the current university curricula. For this purpose, we have developed an educational innovation and improvement project aimed at both, making SGD number 6 visible and boost a deep learning of the technical knowledge by creating emotional impacts on them. Quantitative results obtained from the questionnaires and the marks obtained the exams, as well as the direct feedback received from our students have evidenced the higher level of motivation and active participation in the new learning activities proposed and the favouring of deep learning of the knowledge transferred to the students. The activities developed and implemented can be extrapolated to other SDGs and/or subjects of any university technical degree as the SDGs philosophy is very broad and it interferes with the scope of the majority of these university technical degrees which undoubtedly affect, to a greater or lesser extent, to society, environment and sustainable development in the future.

Keywords:

Emotion, engineering degrees, sustainability, Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, University.