NEW METHODOLOGIES IN ENGINEERING TEACHING: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Engineers must be professionals able to work in team and with multidisciplinary problems. So, it is appropriate during the undergraduating course to expose the students to experiences exploring these aspects. The experience presented here is concerned about the implementation of new methodologies in engineering teaching, using as one of the academic knowledge pillars the Environment and Sustainability area. This area is rich in real problems which can be treated using technical knowledge of Electronic and Computational Engineer. This technical knowledge is another academic pillar used in this proposed methodology. So, the experience leads each team of students to identify a problem in the context of Environment and Sustainability and propose and develop a prototype of a technological system to solve it. However, the system development must be done considering economic variables in a context of a commercial entrepreneurship. The economical knowledge to launch a product in the Market is another pillar in this proposed methodology. Not only the technical system developed contribute with solutions related to Environment and Sustainability, but also in this experience the students are exposed to work with a problem in a multidisciplinary approach integrating knowledge of several areas to generate technological solutions viable either economical and technical.

This experience is done with students of the 4th year of Electronic and 5th year of Computational Engineering, since, in the Engineering School in which this approach is being proposed and tested, these groups of students have classes together in Environment and Sustainability course and in Economic Principles course, which are semestral courses. Since the first day the students are presented to the multidisciplinary approach to be used and are oriented to form teams. Until the third week, the teams should be formed and each team receive the “Kit of basic components” to be used in the development of the prototype. The kit components should be tested outside classroom hours. During the six first weeks, the basic concepts of Environment and Sustainability and Economic Principles are developed. However, these concepts are presented and treated thinking that one problem should be identified in order to propose a technological solution to be developed.

Once the problem is identified, a solution is proposed to the professors. The professors should evaluate the chosen problem, considering if it is related to Environment and Sustainability, and the solution proposed considering the time available to the implementation and the cost and time of acquisition of specific components to be used.

This multidisciplinary approach was used in 2016, in a simplified way, in which the students could not choose the problem to be treated; instead, one problem, and the related components necessary to the prototype development, was given. However, the multidisciplinary approach was used and the synchrony and affinity between the disciplines was explored. In 2017, the new edition of this approach is in course. The multidisciplinary aspects were improved and will be detailed in this paper.