IMPLEMENTATION OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING METHODOLOGY IN A COMPULSORY COURSE OF THE CHEMICAL ENGINEERING DEGREE AT THE UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE VALENCIA

The adaptation to the European Space of Higher Education has favored the lead role of the students in their own learning process, especially promoted through the implementation of active methodologies. One of them is the cooperative learning in which the students develop an activity in small groups to achieve a common objective through the organization of the different activities in a final work. In the core course "Industrial Processes of Chemical Engineering" of the fourth course, different contents are developed by using participative master's lesson. However, it was decided to introduce cooperative learning through the technique of "research in group" to develop the topic of safety applied to the chemical industry. Each group chooses a sub-topic that investigates together and presents the results to the rest of the class.

All the topics are interrelated what allows to broaden and deepen into the contents of the previous one and co-build knowledge about the application of safety in the industry. The activity of each group is valued by the students and the teacher by means of a rubric. In addition, students give their opinion through an anonymous survey about the activity and their preference over the master’s lesson methodology, as well as the reasons that justify it. Finally, the work analyzes the results obtained in the exam about safety topic, in order to determine if the implementation of this methodology has allowed a greater depth knowledge of safety learning in the students.