Abstract:

Industrial engineers usually work in multidisciplinary environments where they have to create efficient, safe and cost-effective methods, turning the discoveries of the chemists into “real-world” products. Integrating multidisciplinary tasks, using qualitative methodologies, it is possible to develop an integral teaching and learning framework, aligning lab experiments and communication tasks, and addressing interpersonal team issues. Besides the experimental work, students must improve their communication skills by writing assignments. The ability to communicate clearly and concisely, both orally and in writing is an important skill that all engineers need to obtain to become truly successful in their professional career [1]. Poor verbal, written or visual communication will lead to confusion and the desired responses will be unsatisfying.

This paper analyzes the results obtained in a survey conducted in engineering classrooms, where students were aimed at analyzing case studied focused on real world problems related with their future engineering professional profiles. A total of 52 students conducted the survey, where 19% were of second course, 10% were of third course, 19% were of fourth course, and 52% were of fifth course. Students were asked about contents of the Industrial Ecology Course, and they had to choose about a more theoretical background teaching in class, or an approximation to real world scenarios, choosing industry models involving ecology planning, and analyzing different problem solving, Environmental Impact Analysis (EIA) or legislation.

The results obtained evidence that the interest on real-world scenarios increases in the last-year students, with a 45% of the students interested in realizing EIA analysis, whereas only 8% of the second course students choose this option. Likewise, the interest for master classes with a more theoretical background decreases from a 42% of the second-year students, to a 24% of the fifth year students. Also, only the fifth-year students showed interest in learning legislation software. From the results obtained it can be concluded that addressing real-world scenarios increases the interest of the students, as analyzing case studies based on real-world problems give to the students the opportunity to compare their solutions to what happened in the industry, using roleplaying and thereby simulating the decision-making scenario that occurred in the industry [2].

References:
[1] Ludlow, D.K., Schulz, K.H. (1994). Writing across the chemical engineering curriculum at the University of North Dakota. Journal of Engineering Education, 161-168.
[2] Rajan, P., Raju, P.K., Sankar, C.S. (2010). Improving mechanical engineering education through use of case studies. ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, Proceedings, 7, pp. 271-279.

Keywords:

Industrial ecology, industrial engineering, environmental subjects.