Abstract:

Agro-Industrial Automation and Process Control, and Control and instrumentation of chemical processes, of Bachelor's degree in Agri-food Engineering and Chemical Engineering are subjects in third course at the University of Girona (UdG). The structure of these subjects are three hours per week of theory, one hour per week problems and one hour in the laboratory.

The main objectives of these subjects are to give to the students a vision of process control, instrumentation, alimentation control and sequential control. During the course 13/14 and 14/15 at the end of each course, make a questionnaire to the students asking some questions about the course and proposals for the future. The most remarkable proposal of this student’s questionnaire is to increase our visit to industrial companies.

As an important point to understand and to see processes in a real situation. Their proposal is in the way to watch all the theoretical aspects described in the subject in a real situation.

Due to the importance of learning by doing in the European higher education area and the objective to adapt the Bologna Declaration, our department decided to test and evaluate to introduce a proposal of our students with the aim of knowing more the real and actual situation in the companies.

During de course 15/16 and this course we introduce as a part of the subjects this proposal. Student’s timetable has a special day dedicated to visit different companies, depending on each specialist, agro-food engineering visiting food companies and chemical engineering the chemical industries. The methodology we use to introduce this kind of activity is like a practice. At the end of the visit, students make an abstract of the visit with an introduction of the company, the description of the process and depth study of all the components described. The evaluation of this part of the subject is with the report and some questions in the final exam.

The results of these experiences are very good, because students can reflect the theory to the practice; they can see kinds of components studied, working in a real situation. They can ask questions to the visit guide normally engineer and receive a feed-back. There is a rapprochement between university and business and students can see if that business sector and company may be interesting for them in the future. In conclusion, it is a benefit for the students.

In this presentation, we will explain our experiences, difficulties and results of this experience and as a new modality process of teaching and learning.

Keywords:

Visit companies, innovation, control process.