Abstract:

The engineering student must acquire self-learning strategies in response to extensive and rapid advances in technology. It is important for students to discover that they have to learn something about new. Nowadays all the industrial processes must be environmental friendly, however, there is no much information about new strategies for the treatment or revalorization of industrial residues. Most of this information is summarized in scientific journals written in English, and usually students do not know how access this information. Consequently it is important that Industrial Engineering students encourage the development of strategies that leads to the acquisition of novelty information, necessary to develop friendly industrial environmental processes.

In this study we evaluate the strategies employed by Industrial Engineering students, in the subject of Science and Environmental Technology, during the fourth and fifth year course, when they have to make a practical work, consisting of reviewing an actual topic. The study was developed in the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Vigo, with a sample of 210 students.

We have observed that most of the evaluated Industrial Engineering students do not know how to manage scientific data base, and in most of the cases they do not know how to cope with the information when it is written in English following the structure of a scientific journal. They like better gain knowledge, about environmental topics, using the information found in Spanish web sites, without using scientific data base.

From this study we can conclude that engineering student must acquire self-learning strategies in response to extensive and rapid advances in Science and Environmental Technology topics and for this purpose will be necessary that students improve the skills for the management of scientific data base, as well as improve their English knowledge, and teachers have to make an effort and facility the acquisition of this kind of tools to the students.

Keywords:

Industrial Engineering, students, environmental topics, practical work.