Seminars in problems as educational strategy for technical teaching: An experience applied to Geotechnical Engineering

Students  of  Civil  Engineering  often  find  a  great  amount  of  difficulties  inthose  courses  where  the practical   application   of   the   theoretical   concepts   is   essential.   This   paper   describes   a   strategy   of apprenticeship  developed  in  the  4th-course subject called “...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Juana Arias-Trujillo, Rocio Porras Soriano
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universitat Politècnica de València 2013-11-01
Series:Red U
Subjects:
Online Access:https://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/REDU/article/view/5547
Description
Summary:Students  of  Civil  Engineering  often  find  a  great  amount  of  difficulties  inthose  courses  where  the practical   application   of   the   theoretical   concepts   is   essential.   This   paper   describes   a   strategy   of apprenticeship  developed  in  the  4th-course subject called “Infraestructuras del transporte”, connected with  Geotechnical  Engineering,  (Civil  Engineering).  This  strategy  is  supported  on  the  technique  of seminars and on the problem-based learning (PBL), and has been carried out for six years. Students have showed a significant interest and motivation for this activity and their opinions respect to the utility of these  seminars  have  been  absolutely  positive,  thanks  to  several  factors  such  as:  flexible  schedules  and tutorials, the coordination between seminars and theoretical learning, the set of problems and practical cases  proposed,  the  organization  of  the  seminars  and  a  fluent  communication  between  students  and teacher. The content of this document is organized as follow. First, it is exposed the general context where this  subject  is  developed,  and  also  the  most  relevant  characteristics  of  this  career.  After  that,  it  is described  this  educational  experience  which  is  focused  on  the  major  difficulties  for  our  students. Moreover,  it  is  explained  the  objectives  and  the  methodology,  highlighting  their  advantages  and disadvantages. Finally, it is analyzed the results and the main conclusions.
ISSN:1887-4592