CREATING A SME, A PROJECT-BASED LEARNING APPROACH TO IMPROVE KNOWLEDGE AND TRANSVERSAL SKILLS ON CHEMISTRY UNDERGRADUATES

Science education is paying special attention to the requirements of the professional profiles. Indeed, the changes in scientific and industrial environment have arisen the necessity of developing of transversal competences, in addition to the technical and scientific knowledge in Chemistry Bachelor Degree. Project-based learning (PBL) approach can respond adequately to these requirements since enhances the integration of the chemistry knowledge with different professional skills and attitudes, such as teamwork, leadership and management.

This project has been carried out by student of Polymer Chemistry subject in the 4th year Degree of Chemistry from the University of The Basque Country. This subject is devoted to introduce polymer chemistry and physics to last year student. However, the students usually present a lack on the capability to relate their acquired knowledge with a professional environment. Also, the classical teaching approaches miss transversal skills that are required for the new type of enterprises that will form the known as The Industry 4.0. In this project SMEs (Small and medium-sized enterprise) based on polymer industry are being developed by student groups. The aim of this work is to introduce the industrial requirements and improve skills such as teamwork and leadership. They begin with a product idea from the context of the subject, searching synthetic methods and characterizations, and they have to finish the project with a structure of their SME, including suppliers, logistic and the administrative structure of the hypothetic enterprise.