INTERDISCIPLINARY COORDINATION BETWEEN SUBJECTS OF MATERIALS ENGINEERING DEGREE THROUGH PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING

This work describes the Innovative Educational Project related to three subjects of the degree on Materials Engineering. This involves the coordination among lecturers of the subjects for the production of new educational material that implies the active participation of the students to favour their autonomous learning and the development of the generic and specific skills associated to the subjects.

The methodology consists in learning based on real industrial problems proposed by different companies in which the Materials Science Engineering department of Rey Juan Carlos University is involved. Problems are divided into two parts that are analyzed and solved under diverse points of view in each subject: i) physical problems will be solved in the subjects of "Electronic and Thermal behavior of the Materials" and "Optical and Magnetic behavior of the Materials", and ii) the second part will be treated in the subject "Ceramic Materials". For example, a real industrial application about optical fiber can be associated to problems of materials with specific optical properties and another important aspect is the selection of the ceramic material, the choice of design or manufacturing process, etc.

New procedures for the evaluation of acquired knowledge and developed skills are established. To evaluate the success of the activities and to suggest improvements for future years, the opinion of the students is taken into account through voluntary and anonymous surveys. To fit the duration of the activities to the corresponding ECTS credits of the seminars of the subjects, the students fill in forms for controlling the time.