Abstract:

Attending to some of the educational goals of the Bologna Declaration, we have developed a series of experiences in Engineering Higher Education in the line of including research tasks in the educational program of our students. We are convinced that the generalization of these practices in the Engineering Higher Education will lead the European University to approach to the Bologna objectives, at least in those referred to the Higher Education adaptation to the European society needs/requirements, innovation and diversification of learning and teaching strategies.

This work has been possible thanks to the sensitivity of both of the involved Universities in reaching the excellence in their respective educational projects: UPV (Valencia, Spain) and UNIJUI (Ijuí-RS/Brazil). In both of them there have been experiences to include research tasks in the students schedule especially in the line of a Research Project shared by these two Universities called: IDENTIFICATION AND QUANTIFICATION OF THE PROBLEM OF USING AGROTOXICS FOR TRANSGENIC CULTURES IN THE URUGUAY RIVER BASIN (RIO GRANDE DO SUL – BRAZIL).

The idea of these experiences has been to introduce our students to the research projects and activities at the University when they are still acquiring their Graduate and not only when they are studying a Postgraduate program, that is most usual.
With these specific experiences, we have been able to include students in some of the tasks of this project. As a result of this work, several Final Projects have been done as well as some grants have been given and/or scheduled for the near future. In addition, a paper is being sent to an important journal in the field of Applied Technology to Chemistry Measurement and this is the first of a series of papers that are expected to be published.

At the end, we have identified at least three clear benefits of these experiences: First of all, we have realized that including Research in Engineering Higher Education is good for students because they are formed in a working area that is becoming more and more important. Next, these experiences are positive to the students because they enrich their Curricula that are usually quite short in working experiences. In the end, we are convinced that Education programs in Higher Education careers in both universities are becoming better by including an additional tool that has not been widely used till the moment.

Keywords:

Higher Education, Research, Students, Collaboration, Pesticides.