Abstract:

The search for new methodologies in the classroom, able to improve the teaching-learning process, is continuous in the new University. The student's active participation in activities that allow them to learn testing, get their degree of involvement to become the essential protagonists of their own learning process. All this, together with the emergence of new general competencies (creativity, group work, leadership capacity, etc.), sometimes difficult to implement, and which also need to be developed and assessed, means that more and more methodologies are betting for experiential learning.

The construction of the structures is located at the vertex of three issues: the material we built up with, its strength and its on-site setting characteristics. Therefore, it must foresee the behavior along time, relative to durability, but also the strains. We must also know the construction system, control its assembly sequence and respect the carrying out times.

The wide magnitude of the three aspects contemplated, not always allows to teach them grouped in the same subject. On the other hand, the independent learning makes difficult for the student to understand as a whole: it is not easy to understand the behavior of concrete without attending to its complex rheology, as well as is difficult to see slight strains in large height pieces. The possibility of gathering them in one experience, no matter how limited, offers these three aspects in a united way: the adequacy of the material, the constructive disposition and the laying out.

This work aims to involve the student in a learning experience where you can apply the theoretical knowledge acquired in the construction of a structural prototype that fits some walls or challenges that must satisfy: The model must be made with limited dimensions and weight and must be able to resist a specific load in a real classroom test. Therefore, they must collect, structure and value the information received, in this and other subjects related to stresses, strengths of materials and behavior of them, for the application to a scale model.
For its implementation, a competition of structural models has been carried out between the Escuelas Técnicas Superiores de Edificación and Ingeniería civil one, that belong to the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, which has allowed the exchange of experiences among students on issues related to the construction and analysis of structures.

Keywords:

Design thinking, experiential learning, structural models, interschool challenge.