Abstract:

For years, it has been clear that the approach to university education in our Engineering Schools should encourage critical thinking and the ability to address problems with open solutions, through several procedures and using autonomous learning techniques, in addition to the simple acquisition of specific knowledge. However, students have traditionally demonstrated problems in solving open-ended approaches, as an additional step to problem-solving competence. The adaptation of learned knowledge and procedures supposes a significant degree of abstraction and demonstrates a certain mastery of the subject of the students, as well as clear skills in competences such as problem solving, but, in many cases, it lacks a systematic methodology that guarantees its applicability to other problems and it is considered that, in Master's studies, it is possible to encourage the acquisition of other skills that expand the possibilities of solving these kinds of problems.

In order to promote critical thinking in Engineering students, an experience was proposed in a master’s subject in the knowledge area of Transportation Engineering focused on the proposal of alternative solutions to problems of intelligent mobility and autonomous and connected driving. The issues raised are focused on current research issues that, in most cases, do not have a single and definitive answer, and can be approached from different optics (technical, social, economic, etc.). On the statement of the problem to be solved and after a prior training on scientific documentation tools and analysis of solutions, students must propose alternative solutions to those found in the literature that overcome the limitations they have found in those implemented or published. The students' work combines individual tasks and tasks in small groups, in order to contrast the solutions proposed among them, contrast the identification of strong and weak points and promote the evolution towards more complex solutions.

The experience has been going on for 10 academic years, and more than 300 students have participated, including students from very different backgrounds in terms of previous degree studies and nationalities. These years have provided relevant conclusions about the approaches treated by the students, the depth degree in the search for previous solutions and the aspects treated with greater or lesser intensity in their critical analyses. These aspects are analysed in the paper.

Keywords:

Research, transport engineering, solution proposal, critical analysis.