Innovative Development of Student Skills in Raw Materials Engineering Programs

Abstract

The CDIO Initiative (Conceive, Design, Implement, Operate), successfully adopted in those engineering disciplines where the final result is the design and engineering of an innovative product, had not achieved such penetration, however, in other areas such as mining, metallurgy, or civil engineering where conception, design, and implementation do not result in a product, but in a complex process or system (e.g., mining extraction). Since 2015, financed with funds from the European Union, different projects have been developed to implement this methodology in these areas, which have continued later with the universities' own funds. The objective of this work is to show one of these projects of the educational innovation group "Innovatio Educativa Tertio Millenio" of the Technical University of Madrid during the past academic years 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, working with two specific techniques such as active learning and design thinking. By making students solve real problems and come up with realistic solutions, they worked on key competencies and could experiment without fear of failure.