A WEBQUEST DESIGN: POWER PLANTS, STEAM AND GAS TURBINES

A webquest could be defined as an inquiry-oriented learning activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet.

It is presented in this work the design of a webquest about “Power plants: Steam and Gas Turbines”. This is one of the topics included in the subject “Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer”. This subject is taught in the second year of Mechanical Engineering at University of Vigo. This degree has only been implemented in the first course. The teaching guidelines are being designed following the European Higher Education Area principles. For that reason, a webquest has been chosen as innovative material to introduce some aspects of the subject.

The main aims of this webquest are focused on power plants questions such as: 1. Steam turbine and gas turbine: Operating principles; 2. Processes involved in power plants using steam turbine and gas turbine; 3. Advantages and disadvantages of steam turbine and gas turbine plants; 4. Gas turbine and steam turbine under an efficiency point of view; 5. Combined cycle plants; 6. Transversal competencies such as team working, oral and written presentation, analyzing and synthesizing information.

In order to develop the activity, the students will be assigned to class groups. Each team will pick one topic to research and will write a paper answering different questions about that topic. Finally, they will have to do a PowerPoint presentation, which includes all the analysed aspects.

Students’ work will be evaluated by means of auto-evaluation, peer evaluation and scores. Groups will be ranked on the quality of information, the visual aspects of the presentations and team work attitude.