Abstract:

The new degree “Bachelor on Industrial Engineering Technologies”, adapted to the European Higher Education Area, is being introduced in the School of Industrial Engineering at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) during the academic year 2010-2011. Several innovation activities are developed for the subject called Environment included in the second year of the Degree. These developments aim at adapting the 5-ECTS course from the 10th semester (Environmental Engineering) to a 3-ECTS subject within the 3rd semester. This adaptation covers both, the conceptual approach to the subject and the way of teaching to sophomore students instead of last-year students, 3.5 years older as an average. The total number of students is around 400 divided into groups of 100 people.

The new orientation provides a more active learning to students, and also favours their continuous evaluation, following the Bologna declaration philosophy. In-depth descriptions and analysis of environmental technologies are no longer included in the course and theoretical lectures are significantly reduced. New and more varied activities that improve the implication of the students and their continuous work are introduced instead. Teaching is based on learning by solving problems, monitoring environment performance through indicators and other practical tasks such as a contest to tackle daily issues of the Faculty through sustainable solutions, etc. These innovations are implemented in the Moodle platform through quizzes and assignments.

Keywords:

Innovation activities, continuous evaluation, Moodle, Environmental Engineering, European space for higher education.