Abstract:

In recent years, a worrying demotivation has been detected in students in the last course of the degree in Chemistry. The time that has passed since they entered the faculty, in many cases much prolonged than expected, and the effort involved in the relative difficulty of some specific subjects, make some students more motivated to finish the degree than to learn and improve their skills. The years that have passed since they began, their experiences throughout the courses make it more important to finish quickly than to enjoy, and acquire the knowledge and transversal skills of the final degree project.

In order to solve this problem, new final year projects were designed combining two approaches: sustainability and multidisciplinarity. Students are increasingly aware of the problems arising from water pollution, which in, many cases, leads to water scarcity and poverty for the most disadvantaged countries. From this context comes the first pillar of the work to be done in their Undergraduate Thesis: designing a water contamination sensor. Furthermore, this objective is also aligned with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) defined by the United Nations in the 2030 Agenda. Specifically, the objective of this work can be framed within GOAL 6: Clean Water and Sanitation.

As previously mentioned the second pillar on which this activity is the multidisciplinarity. In our years of experience in higher education, we have detected that the feeling of leaving the comfort zone to get involved in a different discipline, far from being a rejection, is a plus of motivation... In this case, to carry out the design of the proposed sensor the supervision was done by an expert in telecommunications engineering, specifically, in polymeric optical fibers.

Upon completion of their Undergraduate Theses, the students not only expanded their knowledge in other areas, in this case telecommunications engineering, but also demonstrated better motivation and improved transversal skills. Thus, the students who completed this multidisciplinary experience later showed their interest in continuing with Master's programs to further enhance their knowledge and start their research careers.

Keywords:

Chemistry, ODS, Telecommunication, Transversal Skills.