Abstract:

Curricular development in the European Education Space (EES) includes informal, non-formal, and formal curricular education in a continuous spectrum through lifelong learning. Engineering students must acquire classic competences for professional development, but current higher education framework impulses a holistic training where convergent interests of learners and society can be fruitful. Experiential or service-learning around cooperation for development has been identified as a powerful project learning environment for engineering students. In despite of a fertile ground for creativity and technical development, cooperation for development is mostly in the field of the personal activities of a student minority. Curriculum design allows obtaining credits through university approved activities, complementary to the study plan courses. In this context, it is introduced the development of an initiative approaching the technical and humanistic training around cooperation for development centred in water and sanitation for the formal curriculum of engineering students. The group of promoters, mostly involved with cooperation for development activities at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), have carried out a project to develop a blended learning curricular course. The analysis of the design of the learning initiative is planned in the context of a school of engineering in a technical university. The target group is wide and multipurpose, including both people for lifelong learning and multidisciplinary engineering students covering their formal curriculum by gaining credits, under the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). The configuration of the course is composed of two parts: a MOOC introducing the very basics of human and its environmental sustainability, along some elements of water and sanitation technical projects for cooperation to development. In a second phase, a presential course is delivered to the UPM students, with deeper technical background and the capability of getting ECTS through their study plans. This course will include hands-on project work in activities in the real cooperation for development projects the Group faces, and with focus on the acquisition of the competences for ECTS obtention. Thus, the blended design is built-in a double purpose and double methodology for a wide target collective. The participants is expected to be attracted by the contents and activity introductory MOOC in MIRÍADAX. Next, some of them could follow a presential learning and practical application around ongoing cooperation projects of the Group. The curriculum design, selection of contents, potential learning materials and evaluation are discussed in relationship with its suitability for the course purpose and target group, for a blended methodology in a progressive learning action, from informal and non-formal of the MOOC to the curricular content for engineering students. The design and current implementation are detailed, the foundations and alternatives of the choices are discussed and the outstanding findings of the experience are finally outlined. Preliminary conclusions of the initiative after two-year works are formulated. The initiative is supported through an educational innovation project funded by the UPM.

Keywords:

Experiential Learning, Blended Learning, Impact of Education on Development, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Education and Globalization, Lifelong Learning.