Abstract:

Collaboration actions between institutions of higher education and industry are an issue that has become important in the last decades in Mexico. The Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) offers students the opportunity to participate in the learning modality named "Collaboration Projects with Credit Value (PVVC for its acronym in Spanish)". This curricular option allows the student to contribute their knowledge and skills to a particular interdisciplinary project worked with the private and/or governmental sectors.

In the areas of engineering, due to the changing that is the productive sector on development of new methods and technologies, the participation of students in such projects has acquired a transcendental role to achieve an integral formation. In order to set a better standard for engineering education, the Civil Engineering Program of UABC on its 2 campus (Mexicali and Tijuana), have actively promoted student participation on PVVC, which has generated important collaboration with the private and government sectors, scenario that represents employment options for our graduates

Although such projects have provided positive results in the institution and the productive sector, there is no record of information that exhibits if the students fulfilled or not the objectives, and above all, to feed back both actors to continuously improve these activities. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to identify the achievements carried out by students of the Civil Engineering Program involved in PVVC, in order to determine areas of opportunity and propose projects with a more holistic approach.

In this sense, a survey was designed for identifying the students’ experiences on different PVVC during 2014. The results of the analysis showed that the most relevant knowledge acquired by students is practical. Moreover, participants improved considerable their communication skills, working in team, sociability and initiative abilities. This information reveals an area of opportunity for the students keep getting technical competence and understand the practical application to take into account in the planning and monitoring of future PVVC to be developed in the educational program of Civil Engineering.

Keywords:

Collaboration Projects, Civil Engineering, Productive Sector.