Abstract:

One of the most in-demand skills for hiring new professionals is their ability to effectively and efficiently work in multidisciplinary and multicultural environments. This new scenario might hamper the incorporation of recently graduated students in the labour market, as many students lack the sociocultural skills necessary to develop projects where these social aspects prevail. Although most of the education curricula worldwide include collaborative activities to help students develop co-operative skills, these activities are commonly conducted under a framework in which students have very similar socio-cultural characteristics; i.e. they share the same degree, nationality and language. This situation is very different to what students will face when they start working, or even, when they attend their first work interview, where they will be expected to interact with people of different nationalities and backgrounds. Although some students do part of their studies abroad, which allows them to interact and work with students from other cultures and nationalities, they are not commonly involved in multidisciplinary activities. This is the result of students sharing the same degree and holding a very similar training profile. Likewise, not all students have the opportunity and/or resources to carry out part of their training abroad. Hence, new activities must be implemented to improve the multidisciplinary and multicultural skills of the new generations of students.

Given this background, this pioneering work led by the University of York (UK) and the University of Zaragoza (Spain) has put into contact Chemistry students with Chemical Engineering students from the former and the latter University, respectively, to work together on the design and development of new bio-refinery concepts. In particular, students have been working in pairs (one student from each University) to make a poster and two flash presentations (one in English and other in Spanish) covering the following areas: citric waste valorisation, crude glycerol upgrading, marine plastics pollution remediation and spent cooking/automotive oil valorisation. For this purpose, students have been exchanging e-mails, arranging and having virtual ‘Skype’ meetings as well as posting their work on social media. Measures of performance outcomes achieved with this co-operative project will be analysed at two points, during the poster presentation and during the end-of-term examination. In addition, a comparison will be established between the quality of the works and the insights gained by the students into their topics when they work alone, in national pairs and in international groups. The results will be statistically analysed by means of an analysis of variance (ANOVA) with 95% of confidence.

These activities will help students to consider entire systems in order to solve a problem where there will be interdependencies and may be dynamic in nature. By taking a systems thinking approach, it is expected that this pioneering activity is hopefully going to help the students transition from a reductionist understanding of green chemistry, sustainable chemical engineering and related areas to a holistic deep understanding of a bio-refinery concept, which is more integrated. This is intrinsically related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), to ensure quality education, decent work and economic growth, reduction of inequalities and alliance building.

Keywords:

Co-operation, social skills, multiculturality, multidisciplinarity, peer-leerning, collaborative work.