Abstract:

In the field of technical education, multidisciplinary practical work acquires a fundamental character in the curricular development of the student, since it provides then with a more tangible vision of real tasks to perform once they finish their studies. Establishing the use of active learning methodologies, such as Problem Based Learning (PBL), which develop in the student the capacity for continuous learning and allow them to acquire the skills and competence demanded in the professional world, is considered one of the most appropriate teaching methods for higher education levels, although in Spain it is not very widespread. On the contrary, this methodology is being developed successfully in pre-university cycles, so it is considered appropriate to introduce this method progressively in technical university careers.

In this proposal of teaching innovation a more advanced step of the PBL concept is proposed, executing an Engineering Project within the planned problem, since the future work of the Engineering student will be based on the implementation of methodologies proper to the theory of projects. Within the development of technological engineering projects, and taking into account the current trend, there is a clear promotion of topics related to efficiency and energy saving in buildings, and especially with the integration of renewable energies as a mechanism of sustainable distributed electricity generation for self-consumption.

Therefore, starting from this teaching and technical framework, a learning experience of several years based on PBL has been proposed, through the development of a project which will analyze the potential of renewable electricity generation of a high-school. The identified project will be to replace, only in the design phase, up to a certain percentage, the electricity consumption of this educational building by a supply based on the integration of photovoltaic solar energy systems in the available spaces of the building.

The novelty of this PBL is that it is based on coordinated work between pre-university students (high-school), who take the subject of industrial technology or similar, which are familiar with the PBL methodology, and university students who take subjects in Project Engineering and design of photovoltaics, but do not know this teaching method. To this end, it is proposed to create interdisciplinary working groups at both educational levels, supervised by teachers from the University and the secondary school.

Based on the hypothesis described, students have identified, using an autonomous top-down approach, those technical concepts that need to be deepened in order to achieve a feasible solution. Each of the participating groups is designing and researching on the type of photovoltaic installations according to current permitted legislation, and the different types of architectural solar integration more widespread to make a free design of a photovoltaic installation, which generates the maximum possible electricity production, taking into account the characteristics of the location of the building, and therefore minimizes the consumption of electricity from the grid.

The fundamental about this project is that the reinforcement and transfer of technical knowledge to pre-university students is being carried out mainly by University students, and these in turn, are mentored by University teachers for the transmission of those concepts they have not seen in their respective courses.

Keywords:

PBL, Secondary School, Higher Education, Undergraduate students, Engineering, Technology, Renewable Energy.