APPLICATION OF PROJECT BASED LEARNING IN EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECTS OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

In the process of European convergence that at the moment is being developed at the European universities, the formation in competences is going to have a special importance. This new approach will force to look for learning situations which foment in the students the development of the capacity of solving problems as real as possible. Inside of this context, the active methodologies are going to have a fundamental paper since they offer the possibility of working some very important competences at professional level that cannot be developed with the solely application of the master class. Thus, teachers should find methodologies that cause an approach to the proffessional reality as a way to get a significant, wide and constructive learning, which allows to continue learning all through the profesional life. In this sense, project based learning is an education-learning method in which the students make a project in a certain time to solve a problem or to develop a determined task. In this process, students have to plan, design and accomplish a series of activities, applying the acquired learnings and using the necessary resources.
Some years ago, the project based learning method began to be applied in several experimental subjects in the degree of Chemical Engineer. The main reasons for applying this method were that it allows to develop very excellent competences for the future professional work of our students of Chemical Engineering, and it offers the possibility of making multidisciplinary works elaborated in group. The experimental subjects in which the project based learning was applied are: “Pilot Plant Experimentation”, which is placed at the second semester of the third year, and “Advanced Experimentation”, an annual subject of the fourth year. The main objective of the application of the project based learning method in these subjects is to introduce the student in the design of industrial facilities through a methodology that allows to work in a way very similar to that of real professionals.
In this work, one describes the way of applying project based learning in the mentioned subjects, as well as the way that the students work. Furthermore, the main opportunities and difficulties found after some years of application are analysed.