Abstract
An initiative carried out at the Technical University of Cartagena (UPCT, Spain) to encourage students and promote the interest for Scientific and Engineering Culture between society is presented in this contribution. For this purpose, a long-term project based on the set-up of an interactive laboratory surrounding a small Radio Telescope (SRT) system has been carried out. The main novelty is that this project is entirely being developed by students of last courses of our Telecommunication Engineering Faculty, under the supervision of four lecturers. This lab offers the possibility to remotely control the SRT, and it provides a set of multimedia web-based applications to produce a novel, practical, multidisciplinary virtual laboratory to improve the learning and teaching processes in related sciences and technologies.
Highlights
As we are immersed in the “Bologna process” to reach the EEES (European Space for Higher Education) [1], academic and government regulators request for innovate experiences to improve the learning process, highlighting the necessity to develop of more practical, less theoretical, teamwork, interdisciplinary competencies
AMONG THE STUDENTS To evaluate the degree of success of this initiative, with respect to some of the objectives described in Section II, several questions were addressed to the students, once they had finalized their project for the Small Radio Telescope (SRT)
Regarding question 6, it is interesting to note that 45% of the students answered “Not at all”, a 26% answered “Not sure” and the remaining 29% answered “Sure”. This project is not intended to replace the theoretical courses, which in opinion of this lecturers are indispensable for the students in order to face the more practical projects proposed in this SRT initiative
Summary
As we are immersed in the “Bologna process” to reach the EEES (European Space for Higher Education) [1], academic and government regulators request for innovate experiences to improve the learning process, highlighting the necessity to develop of more practical, less theoretical, teamwork, interdisciplinary competencies. Very worrying is the reality detected in the last decade which shows that young people around Europe are losing their interest in Science and Engineering culture (see, for instance the objectives and efforts made in Spain by FECYT [2]) Being aware of these facts and feeling responsible as part of a public Spanish University, some lecturers of the Telecommunication Engineering Faculty at the Technical University of Cartagena (UPCT, Spain) decided to undergo the experience of involving our last course students in the development of a Small Radio Telescope (SRT) and set-up of an associated laboratory where to boost practical and multidisciplinary competencies in the subjects of Radio Astronomy, Microwave and Antenna Engineering. This laboratory can serve as a tool to attract future students to our Faculty, and it is very useful to disseminate Radio Astronomy between non-specialized individuals, local amateur astronomers [19,20], and society in general
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