Abstract:

The RD 822/2021, which establishes the organization of university education, promotes the inclusion of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and democratic values in the curricula. This context is an opportunity to adapt and update the contents of the subjects and improve teaching performance. Bachelor’s degrees, and in particular GITI (Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València) are adapting to this new legal and regulatory framework and, at the same time, take advantage to propose, design, implement and evaluate innovative teaching strategies that enhance training about the SDGs.
We are aware that many lecturers have been working on these issues for some years, while other lecturers have worked and continue to do so working on some soft skills (CTs) that are closely related to the SDGs. Similarly, some pre-university lecturers also include the SDGs in different subjects. However, this work, which has been voluntary until now and usually not recorded, is not enough. Before expressly including in the teaching guides what contents related to the SDGs are going to be treated and how they are going to be evaluated, it is necessary to know the scenario in which we find ourselves. Specifically, we refer to the degree of knowledge of our students regarding SDGs and their commitment to the issue.
The better diagnosis is done, the more effective the new implementations will be. To this end, this work focuses on the view of two groups of students, those enrolled in the subjects "Statistics" and "Energy Technology" of the bachelor degree GITI for the academic course 2022-2023. Both groups also differ in the academic year they are studying, and they are 3 years separated. Based on a literature review, a reduced and compact questionnaire based on a Likert scale has been designed, which allows the students to be broadly characterized regarding the knowledge about SDGs and identify differences between the two groups. As a result of this analysis, it should be noted that, in general, the students do not consider themselves trained in this contemporary theme. Students of “Statistics” do not perceive strong relations between this subject and the SDGs. This indicates the need to work on more cases of the application of statistical tools. On the contrary, the students of "Energy Technology" perceive their subject as related to specific SDGs. This makes sense since they implicitly work on SDG 7 (Guarantee access to affordable, safe, sustainable and modern energy) and SDG 12 (Ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns). Furthermore, significant differences by gender stand out, with the female students being more aware of the importance of the SDGs and more involved in their achievement. Additionally, this overall perspective on the students’ opinion shows an opportunity to coordinate university degree contents, to enrich both subjects by enhancing synergies and taking the SGDs as a context.

Keywords:

SDGs, higher education, Statistics, Energy technology.