Abstract:

This work describes new educational material that implies the active participation of the students of Materials and Aerospace Engineering Degrees to favour their autonomous learning and the development of the generic and specific skills associated to their subjects.

The methodology consists on the problem based learning. The students will solve some real cases related to public research projects and contracts signed between the department of the teachers and several companies. It is interesting that students become aware of the practical cases related to the industrial areas in which a Materials and Aerospace engineer is going to work (i.e. the development of removable adhesive joints based on induction heating). The students need to be introduced into the more relevant companies of their area. When solving these problems, they will be able to develop different skills such as analysis of problems, searching for solutions, searching for commercial information about a certain product (for example its cost).

New procedures for the evaluation of acquired knowledge and developed skills are established. To evaluate the success of the activities, the opinion of the students will be taken into account through voluntary and anonymous surveys.

Keywords:

Problem based learning, autonomous learning.