Liderança: percepção de alunos ingressantes de um curso de Engenharia de Produção em um ambiente de aprendizagem baseada em projetos

Project-based Learning (PBL) has been used – since 2013 – in the subject “Integrated Project in Production Engineering I” offered to first year students enrolled on the Production Engineering course at the School of Engineering of Lorena, University of São Paulo. The objective of such methodology is to expose the student to situations very similar to those they will experience in their professional life in the future. One of the desirable competencies a good engineering professional should have is to be able to work as a leader or subordinate, as they will be in one of these positions inevitably. Considering that, in the last years, the perception of leadership has shifted from a single skill to a set of desirable attributes owing to the market needs; this project aims to analyze the students’ perception of such competency. In 2015, a case study was applied to the students from the 1st semester, a total of 41, divided in 6 teams composed of 6 or 7 members each. On applying PBL, two leaders were selected among the members of each team: The first one volunteered in the first lesson, and the second was chosen by the group in the midsemester. In order to collect data, questionnaires were applied in the middle and at the end of the semester, and the students’ Whatsapp chat histories were compiled and analyzed, as this app was used at all the time by all teams. The results showed acknowledgment of the figure of the leader throughout the project, being the second leader better evaluated than the first. Moreover, on analyzing the Whatsapp chat histories it was possible to ascertain the acknowledgment of attitudes such as initiative, participative, shared and constant communication, organization and accountability.