PROJECT-BASED LEARNING AS A COORDINATION METHODOLOGY BETWEEN SUBJECTS IN A CHEMICAL ENGINEERING DEGREE

Abstract

An important issue in any academic degree is to develop a high level of vertical/horizontal coordination between the different subjects taught along the four courses. This activity takes into account the coordination of the contents and methodologies that the teachers teach and the students acquire, the timing when the students learn them and the homework/exams that they do. As a result, both teachers and students gain an overall view of the degree and the teaching-learning process improves. According to this idea, the teachers of the Chemical Engineering degree at Campus of Alcoy are participating in an Educational Innovation and Improvement Project (PIME) for applying the project-based learning (PBL) methodology to the design of an adsorption system for the elimination of dyes in wastewater from the textile industry. This work is scheduled along the four courses and is distributed between some of the core subjects that the students attend. The adsorption column design is partially solved in each subject and the results obtained in one subject are used in the following. As a result, the project is completed sequentially throughout the degree applying a methodology based on teamwork. This paper shows the activities proposed in different subjects, their timing and assessments during four courses. These activities include laboratory work for obtaining adsorption equilibrium and adsorption kinetics experimental data together with column dynamic performance. Other activities belong to the modelling and simulation domain for establishing the mathematical equations corresponding to the different phenomena linked to adsorption. Also, there are activities focused on experimental data treatment for estimating the parameters characterizing the adsorption isotherms or mass transfer coefficients. Finally, other activities are devoted to the column design and control, cost estimation, and oral/writing communication of the work done by the students.