Abstract:

Currently, most of the key technical skills they learn in higher education, including analytic and problem-solving abilities, might be ineffectual unless accompanied by the professional skills necessary to bring them into play (Mohan et al., 2009), such as those that are ‘generic’ or ‘transferable’ (e.g., ‘problem-solving skills’)”. Current research is focused on innovative pedagogical methodologies to boost transferable skills such as cooperative learning, learning by doing, life-long-learning, problem-based-learning, interdisciplinary cooperation and flipped classroom, among others. Thus, there is a need for a new teaching pedagogy that changes the role of the teacher from a knowledge disseminator to a learner coach and helper. This project aims to promote the use of pedagogical and technological resources helping to train transferable skills in the area of Chemical Engineering, applying active teaching-learning methodologies and multimedia resources available in the Information Age. All methodologies are being applied in different degrees of the University of Valencia.

Different active teaching-learning methodologies and multimedia resources available were applied for helping to train transferable skills in the area of Chemical Engineering evaluate. Specifically, this work shows results from the application of several pedagogical and technological resources aimed to boost transferable skills such as cooperative learning, problem-based-learning (PBL), and flipped classroom. The pedagogical and technological resources evaluated to train transferable skills in Chemical Engineering are Instagram, Kahoot, Padlet, Plickers, RBCA Toolkit, Socrative, and Youtube. Moreover, the impact of these techniques has been also compared to specialized software such as Aspen Plus, AutoCad, and hysys, among others.

The resources have been applied in different degrees of the University of Valencia, such as: Bases for Chemical Engineering, and Quality Management of the Degree in Food Science and Technology; Materials science II, and Environment and Sustainability of the Degree in Industrial Electronic Engineering; Management of contaminated soils and sediments of the Master's Degree in Environmental Engineering; Basic operations in biotechnological processes, and Environmental Biotechnology Processes Engineering of the Degree in Biotechnology; Pollution Control Technologies of the Degree of Environmental Sciences; Simulation and advanced optimization of processes of the Master's Degree in Chemical Engineering; and Engineering Graphics, Environment and sustainability; Water treatment technologies, General services and auxiliary systems; Process and Product Engineering I, Environmental pollution engineering of the Degree in Chemical Engineering. Thus, the methodologies were tested at different level (undergraduate and graduate).

Methodology for assessing the impact of the tools used to train transferable skills consisted on different surveys at three checkpoints: before the beginning of the use of App, and at the end of the semester to evaluate the global impact. Both surveys were mainly based on a Likert-scale, from 1 (lower punctuation) to 5 (higher punctuation). The individual results obtained by applying different tools will serve as the basis of Mutual learning for the identification and selection of effective and viable methodologies for educational innovation in the area of Chemical Engineering.

Keywords:

Chemical engineering, technological resources, transferable skills.