Analysis of a project course at a basic level for the engineering Program at University of Chile

In year 2007 the new plan for engineering studies at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of University of Chile begun. The plan is based on CDIO standards and considers the entire professional careers as well as scientific programs imparted by the School of Engineering. One of the main changes were the incorporation of Introduction to Engineering course in the first year (standard 4) and the transformation of a design course in the second year to a project course in order to have experiences of design and implementation (standard 5) with emphasis on product construction and process implementations under real contexts at a basic level. The project course is demanded actually by almost 700 students in the fall semester and we have decided that in order to have a close relation between students and professors each class should have a limited number of students so we need a large number of teachers to fulfill this requirement. The challenge of finding teachers motivated for offering this type of course is analyzed and posterior demotivation of some of them is commented. Since 2008, six versions of the course have been carried out and this article intends to show the way that students know (http://escuela.ing.uchile.cl/docencia/ei2001) and select the topic of interest, the evolution of the areas/departments (1: Chemistry and Biotechnolgy, 2: Astronomy, 3: Mining Engineering, 4: Civil Engineering, 5: Computer Sciences, 6: Electrical Engineering, 7: Industrial Engineering, 8: Physics, 9: Geophysics, 10: Mechanical Engineering and 11: Mathematical Engineering) covered by the different professors of the course and the minimum and maximum number of students taking any of the projects in each fall semester. Also the final activity where one group of each section communicates its project through a poster presentation is commented. Finally, recommendations for future versions of the course are presented.

Proceedings of the 10th International CDIO Conference, Barcelona, Spain, June 15-19 2014