Abstract:

Nowadays, our society must progress within the perspective of sustainable development. In this process, the University plays a key role in the training of future professionals, providing them with a series of skills and values that allow them to act in a sustainable and responsible way. In this context, this project focuses on the design and implementation of a virtual tool aimed at students of degrees related to chemistry who are developing their degree final project or master's thesis. This platform seeks to make the agents involved aware that it is possible to meet the needs of today's way of life without compromising future generations. Specifically, at the end of this project, the students involved will be able to make a rational use of chemical products as well as understand the dangers and risks associated with their use and management, in order to ensure that humans and the environment remain safe. This is an ambitious goal and to achieve it, a continuous process is necessary throughout which students will develop their critical thinking and will be aware of the consequences associated with their actions.

The e-learning virtual classroom designed consists of 6 modules that students must complete. Through this process, the students will acquire a theoretical training in the application of sustainable chemistry that they will later transfer to their experimental work. The students, always accompanied by a teacher as a guide, will design their synthesis experiment, applying the principles of green chemistry. In addition, they must exhaustively analyse the chemical reagents to be used and the management of the generated waste. Finally, the students must validate the proposed experimental design and put it into practice. Through this project, students will learn to value the benefits derived from their activity aligned with sustainable chemistry, actively participating in the discussion and decision-making throughout the process; that is, to form a new responsible research group with safe, efficient work and minimal environmental impact.

Acknowledgement:
This work corresponds to an innovation project in education that has been granted by the University of the Basque Country (SAE/HELAZ – reference IKDi321-17).

Keywords:

Sustainability, self-learning, chemistry, e-learning.