Project Based Learning Activities in Engineering Education

Tiago Faustino Andrade

doi:10.3991/ijep.v3is2.2438

Abstract

<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;" lang="EN-US">In the present work, the author reports examples of his involvement in different teaching/learning methodologies during his five years of the Integrated Master Degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto. The aim is to explain how useful those experiences have been, allowing him to explore many techno-scientific activities within his engineering education while student as well as other <span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;">transferable</span> skills and later, up to the present, as a professional in academic environment. The author wishes to underline the excellent opportunity he had to practice reflection processes as an essential methodology of his engineering education.</span>

Highlights

The author studied for his degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto (FEUP) between academic years 2002/03 and 2007/08
Before the new Bologna curriculum was officially implemented at FEUP in 2006/07, our school was already following ABET and EUR-ACE recommendations [1, 2] since at least the author’s first academic year, offering in addition to traditional teaching/learning practices other methodologies based on project based mentoring activities
In 2003, a project named Exploring Multidisciplinary Engineering Problems (EMPE) started, in a voluntary base, a momentum between teachers/researchers, students and technicians involving all departments at FEUP and even extended actions to other Faculties at University of Porto (UPorto) as well as to other Universities in Portugal, [3, 4]

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The author studied for his degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto (FEUP) between academic years 2002/03 and 2007/08. All those experiences which will be briefly described have proved to the author the relevance of teaching/learning mentoring methodologies he experienced as a student, learning or even “teaching”, the latter being the case related with his indirect later involvement in younger students’ work Another relevant output from these experiences was the fantastic opportunity for balancing the increasing specialization in today’s engineering curricula and the ensuing fragmentation of subjects which lead to a growing need for unification of concepts. Further to the short descriptions of the projects main goals some comments will be added about important aspects from those experiences still in the back of the author’s mind

WHILE FRESHMAN STUDENT

Final year student

Integrated Master Thesis

WHILE A GRADUATE STUDENT

IN CONCLUSION