Abstract:

The University of Talca is a public institution that belongs to the Higher Education system in Chile, accredited for 6 years in all areas and is top 10 ranked nationally. According to the institutional mission, one of the aims of the university is contributing to the divulgation and practice of the sciences to improve the welfare of the society. Under that context, several projects have been working in order to pave way for increasing the understanding and valuing of science in the regional and national education community.

In 2016 the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Talca got a grant from the Ministry of Education to develop the project “TruckLab: Techno-science on wheels” consisting in 4 laboratories mounted on a trailer truck which main objective is to promote the divulgation and value of science in the regional school system, on site, itinerating in zones of the Maule Region where the access of schools to STEM activities are scarce. The developing activities match with the curriculum in regime, including an accredited teacher training, as well as local activities for school students where the truck is temporary settled and generation of complementary material on the covered topics.

In this article the initiative TruckLab is evaluated:
a) in its performance through the years regarding the original objectives,
b) the adjustments made due to the sanitary global emergency and
c) the projection made to fit to virtual contexts, as a way to replicate the experience facing the sanitary global emergency.

Keywords:

Science-itinerancy, Laboratories, TruckLab, STEM.