Abstract:

In the 2020-21 academic year, a methodological change was implemented in the core subject of 4.5 credits "Industrial Chemical Technology", of the 1st year of the Master's Degree in Industrial Engineering, with the main objective of reinforcing training in analysis and problem solving. Innovation consisted of the implementation of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) through problem solving based on real industrial processes. Specifically, students solve in groups more open problems than those carried out in class, having to search, select and justify data and complementary information. In this way, it is intended that students acquire a more global vision of the processes of the chemical industry and that they are able to face and solve problems more similar to those that may be found in their professional future.

To analyse the innovation carried out, at the end of the subject, the 8 teachers of theory of the subject, who had participated in the PBL activity, responded to a survey on different aspects of it such as adequacy of the materials developed, difficulties encountered in the development of the activity and applied evaluation criteria, among others. This paper describes the main results of the survey, from which several points of improvement are derived that were later analysed by the teachers to propose different improvements to be applied in the following courses.

Keywords:

Problem-Based Learning, chemical technology, industrial engineering, deep learning, application, resolution, problems.