Abstract:

This paper presents a practical teaching-learning experience carried out in the second year of the Environmental Engineering degree at the School of Engineering of Bilbao belonging to the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in Spain. For this purpose, the practical programs included in two of these courses, Ecology and Soil Science, have been integrated and oriented towards a practical team-experience focused on sustainability. The aim of the practical teaching-learning experience is that students are aware of, on the one hand, the connections between the knowledge acquired in each course and, on the other hand, the need to address sustainability issues from a multidisciplinary point of view. The practice consists of managing a crop of plant species in an urban garden. The students monitor the growing process for approximately 3 months in different types of soil, evaluating the effects of watering and carbon capture on the growth rate of different substrates (Ecology task). Along this time, students are dedicated to the physical-chemical characterization of the different types of soil (Soil Science task). Once the growing time is reached, the students determine the amount of carbon in the plants by elemental analysis and calculate the amount of CO2 absorbed during growth (Ecology task), correlating the absorption levels to the properties measured for different types of soils. Finally, as an action of sustainability, students extrapolate plant growth results to estimate the impact that their conclusions may have at agricultural scale on the absorption of atmospheric CO2. This experience has been very positively valued by the students since it brings the teaching content of two courses to practical experiences such as the management of an urban garden. It certainly contributes to enhance their skills and awareness of environmental protection and sustainability via the understanding of the plant growth process.

Keywords:

Practical teaching-learning, sustainablitity, urban garden, team-experience, multidisciplinarity.