Leadership Development of Technology Students Through Experiential Learning

Numerous studies show that leadership is one of the factors that impact most on software projects’ success. But even with more than $14B spent yearly on leadership development, it is worrying that more than half of the organizations still believe they are not doing it effectively. One of the most efficient methodologies used in companies is David Kolb’s Experiential Learning, but still uncommon on universities due to the difficulty of simulating practical experiences. Many approaches have been tried with various results and little standardization. For this reason, this study proposes a model for using group activities to help technology students practice leadership skills. A first pilot was executed with positive outcome but more experiments are necessary to ensure its application on other skills and contexts.

The Integration of University with High School Through an Experience Using Pjbl

The present work describes an exchange of experiences among students of the State School CIEP 291 - Dom Martinho Schlude in the City of Pinheiral, RJ, with the Advertising and Propaganda students, Information Systems and Engineering of the University Center of Volta Redonda (UniFOA) during a period of six months. The partnership arose due to a school´s need to develop some actions to participate in the Jaguar Land Rover Competition, 4x4 in Schools Technology Challenge. The challenge required technological changes in a prototype of a 4x4 vehicle approximately 20 cm long, 10 cm wide and 10 cm high. A micro-enterprise was create, with a logo and marketing actions, approaching an entrepreneurial vision. All actions taken were on display on a given day through verbal presentations and visualization of the team's booth. In addition to fulfill these needs, each team were evaluate on the performance test of the prototype in an obstacle course to take time. A partnership with UniFOA was created to assist in project development and support in the area of technology, strategy and marketing. Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) led the industry's support in research and development for strategic planning for the team's actions. The students of the courses of Design, Information Systems, Advertising and Propaganda and Electrical and Mechanical Engineering assigned two hours a week for approximately six months to a technical monitoring involving the needs of the Team. In the end, the secondary students were able to elaborate all the necessary requirements according to the regulation participating in the National Stage and later of the World Stage. The UniFOA students were able to apply the concepts using Project Based Learning as a methodology fulfilling the role of the university in the society that is to produce knowledge, generate critical thinking, organize and articulate knowledge, forming citizens and professionals. The experience was very enriching providing for all involved strengthening of numerous cognitive and socio emotional skills. As a result of the project, the AUTO291 team was the champion in the National Stage, conquering the opportunity to represent the country in the world event, being the champion team in the category of "Best Media Dissemination" and was among the top three in the "in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates..

A Semi-Attending Robotics Course Proposal: An On-line Platform and set of In-Person Meetings For Teaching Robotics using Lego Mindstorms EV3

The application of robotics as an instrument for boosting the learning process inside classrooms is nowadays a quite reachable reality. The participatory method, in which students and tutors cooperate among themselves for pursuing knowledge, reveals itself as an increasingly easer and didactic manner of passing on knowledge in class. Making use of this learning method, and the interest of the youth for the technological field, a semi-attending robotics course has been delivered by students of the Universidade Federal do Ceará to students and teachers from the public schools’ system in the municipality of Sobral, State of Ceará, in partnership with the UFC Virtual Institute and the Education Office of Sobral (SEDUC). It is common that students of secondary education lose interest and feel discouraged when studying some school subjects, because of their abstract nature. Aiming for aiding the teaching of these subjects, such as mathematics, physics and computer programming, Educational Robotics was used as an effort for making such subjects more interesting and easier to grasp, dynamizing their studying. This project aimed to introduce basic notions about robotics making use of the Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit, with aid of SOLAR, an online platform where the e-learning classes were taught, and the utilization of a visual language for programming the robots, part of the software bundled with the Lego Mindstorms Ev3 kit. The in-person meetings were carried out every last weekend of each month, so that the students could practice programming the Lego Mindstorms and put into use what they had learned in the virtual classes beforehand. At the end of the course, when all the students already had the skills for programming the robotics kit, a competition was held with the intent of harvesting the results obtained over the duration of the course. The teams with best performance were awarded medals and trophies, as recognition of the effort they put in. The participants were also encouraged to keep studying and improving their knowledge of robotics after the end of the course.

Environmental Education and Energy Efficiency as Strategies for Reducing Energy Consumption in Public School Building in Goiânia

Electrical energy is essential for the quality of life of people, who use it in different socioeconomic activities and for technological development. In view of the gradual increase in the demand for electricity and the future possibility of not serving all the consumer sectors, it is necessary to optimize it. The objective of this study was the application of strategies based on the pillars of energy efficiency and environmental education in order to minimize the expenditure of electric energy in public buildings, which were selected for this project due to the fact that, its users show a lack of concern about the correct consumption of electric energy since the expenses are tied to the public coffers and are not always perceived by the people as resources coming from the taxes paid by the citizens. Among the public buildings that consume the most electric energy, the most important are those in the education sector. In fact, a larger project called the Energy Efficiency Project in Public Buildings in Goiânia (PEEEPG), to which this work is linked, found that among the municipal public buildings, the education sector is responsible for approximately 30% of the electricity consumption and, therefore, this specific sector was selected for the application of the selected strategies. The methodology used was based on research-participant, environmental education together with replacement of lamps by LED system (Light Emitting Diode) at strategic locations in the building and monitoring of results. The actions carried out included the lamp replacement, and educational lectures offered to students of different age groups in three school shifts with a partnership of employees and teachers of the municipal school selected on energy efficiency and strategies to reduce the consumption of electricity. The project mobilized directly about 200 people belonging to the target audience and indirectly 800 students who were part of the teaching unit. It was collected a data base among 2012 to 2016. The methods of data collection and analysis were based on documentary research, analyzing the electric energy bills of the building, as well as documents and legislation of the municipality itself on the consumption of electric power and the architecture model applied to school environments in Goiânia. The results obtained, after a monitoring period of six months (November to April) during the years 2016 and 2017, indicated an analyze to reduction of 16% of the consumption of electric energy in the building, compared to the same period in the previous year. Therefore, this result regard to the possibility of investments in energy efficiency projects for public buildings, subsidizing actions in the design, retrofit and maintenance of public buildings.

Engineering graduation: why introduce sustainability

This article exposes the importance of training engineers who, since graduation, have in depth knowledge in both practical and theoretical areas of social, environmental and economic issues, including sustainability in its entirety. Through a bibliographical review of the existing materials in this context and the results obtained through researches, it was possible to confirm the theories addressed throughout the text. The pertinence of this article comes from the need to control the progress of the destruction of the environment that is directly influenced by the practice of the Engineering profession. The engineer, because of his active participation in the changes in the environment in which he lives, has increasingly felt the need to adapt to the new world reality, which requires, both socially and economically, the introduction of sustainability in the practice of the profession. From this, we have succeeded in researches that demonstrated, through data and graphs, the growing requisition of the economic market for environmental certificates such as ISO 14001: 2015, used in Brazil, which had its emission intensified around 544% in the period of 2016 to 2017. However, with a survey conducted at the Polytechnic School of Pernambuco, it was possible to note that only an average of 1.94% of the engineering curriculum is intended for sustainability education, thus confirming the importance of upgrading university programmes. In addition to this innovation in the faculties, it is necessary to live the principles of sustainability, as in the concept of "living laboratory", in which engineering undergraduate institutions become the means that allows and provides the insertion in the labor market , of a conscientious professional in relation to the sustainability pillars, including the social, environmental and economic spheres.

Clown Group - Engineers without Borders (Knowledge Connections): Building a Humanistic Training in Engineering Courses

The Clown Group – Engineers without Borders (Knowledge Connections) is a group of clowns formed by Engineers and Engineering students. The theoretical basis of the Clown Group goes back to the origins of Jerzy Grotowski's “poor theater” (1933–1999). Concerning the use of music, theater and dance to present and promote the pleasure of art, the Group values the interaction with the public and does not worry about the structural elements commonly characterized by the theater as stage and lighting. In this way, the Clown Group promotes a Humanistic Formation of its members by providing a development in the capacity of communication, contact with the external community and also the satisfaction, by allowing the art to be spread in a simple and effective way. The objective of this work is to analyze the importance of Humanistic Training in the professional and personal development of Engineers and Engineering students, treating as a special case the Humanistic Training linked to the actions of the Clown Group – Engineers without Borders (Knowledge Connections). As a hypothesis, it is expected that the experience of members and ex–members of the Clown Group can be proven through their training and presentations over the years. In order to evaluate the personal and professional development of members and ex–members of the Clown Group during the training process, a qualitative research was carried out, via an applied questionnaire, in addition to a documentary research by observation, in which data were collected through analysis and observation of photos and documents of the Clown Group. In addition, Artificial Neural Networks were used to correlate the members and ex–members based on the two applied researches. The members and ex–members of the Clown Group have experienced a major break in introspection, significantly improving their way of communicating with society. The members and ex–members presented an improvement in the way they relate to each other in a team, a fundamental aspect of an Engineer's professional life. The Clown Group presents itself as a very important action for Humanistic Training and the professional and personal development of Engineers and Engineering students. The diffusion of art in the academic and external community promoted by the Clown Group also allows the deconstruction of the stereotype that the areas of Engineering and the Arts cannot coexist.

Alternative Method of Internal Mobility for The Campus do Vale on UFRGS

The Center for Educational Engineering – NEED of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul’s School of Engineering has fostering the continuous improvement and innovation of engineering education through the development of innovative teaching practices as its goal. The project “Freshmen Reception – UFRGS Challenge” – 2017/1 was created as proposed. In this sense, NEED, drawing from concepts of active learning issued to the freshmen the challenge of how to make UFRGS more sustainable, making it possible to associate theoretical knowledge with practice. Through the proposed challenge, the Ciclo Camp project was developed by a group of freshmen from the SE’s various engineering courses, who suggested an alternate mean of internal transportation within the Valley campus. The project aims to provide a new form of transit for the student community, grounded on the concept of clean transportation. The project is about the rental of bicycles through a cellphone application to active students and staff members at UFRGS, for internal use within the Valley Campus. Stemming from this concept, the present article weaves an analysis of the acceptance of internal bicycle rental and sharing at UFRGS, besides proposing actions for the improvement of its most relevant aspects. For the evaluation and possible realization of the project, it was decided to elaborate and apply a survey to 155 currently enrolled students at UFRGS, in order to identify categories of applicability and economic applicability. The survey is structured in three major phases: a diagnosis performed through the questionnaire, validation of the data and analysis of the obtained results. As a result, it was observed that students reported being late to classes throughout the academic term due to the distance between the main locations of the Campus as well as claimed that the use of bicycles is a time-saving and facilitating method. As such, the students agree to make a symbolic payment for the maintenance of the bicycles, as well as to utilize the cellphone application. The need for the implementation of the Ciclo Camp project in the Valley Campus could be verified based on the diagnosis. After conducting the analysis of the results, an action plan was put in place, based on the Golden Circle process, a concept developed by leadership specialist Simon Sinek in order to create and develop the value of new ideas through a simple methodology. For the studies on the scope of the usage of bicycles as sustainable means of transportation, it is suggested through this article that the bicycles for the Ciclo Camp project be made in the institution’s metallurgical laboratories out of scrap metal coming from UFRGS itself.

Analysis of Engineering Students’ Common difficulties with DC electric circuits in an Inquiry-based laboratory

The students’ understanding about direct current electric circuits’ concepts has been extensively investigated in secondary schools as well as at university level. In the University of São Paulo (IFSC/USP), for more than 10 years, our group has been researching the Electricity and Magnetism laboratory course to Engineering students’. Similarly to reported in the literature, we observed that students often leave physics classes with less of an understanding of physics concepts than we had expected. In this paper we present an investigation of the difficulties that students in the Electricity and Magnetism laboratory have with current electric circuits' concepts and how that research was used as a guide in the development and evaluation of the guided-inquiry lab on these topics to help students learn these concepts better. Initially, we adapted a question developed by McDermott in 2006 and employed it to investigate students’ conceptual understanding of electric circuits in three states of Brazil. STEM areas were involved in this research and the question was applied after students attended to theoretical and laboratory courses. Students had to order light bulbs according to brightness in three different electric circuits to answer the question. Only ~13% of students answered correctly agree to result in other countries and it inspired us to restructure the laboratory guide from a course in our institution. Our new guide was inquiry-based with some activities adapted from Tutorials in Introductory Physics and others developed in a prediction-observation-explanation form. The same question was used as pre and post-test and the average percentage of students who got the maximum score was 47%. We also have been using the Determining and Interpreting Resistive Electric Circuit Concepts Test (DIRECT), which is composed by a 29-multiple choice questions, that can be grouped in conceptual objectives, allowing us identifying specific conceptual difficulties. We proposed many modifications in the students’ guide, after analyzing the questions, and some of them we managed to improve, like those related to resistance and current. On the other hand, less than 50% of students could answer correctly some questions related to the concepts of power and voltage in the post-test, even after our efforts to improve learning in this aspect. We have been able to help students overcome known conceptual difficulties with the proposal of new activities, but some difficulties still a challenge to be outgrown. This fact has shown us that research for improving practice is fundamental to overcome persisting difficulties and is a long-term and constant action. Also, using different resources such as homework activities on the internet, videos and computer simulations have shown to be useful tools as supplement materials.

Flipping the classroom: applying the circuit in Foundation Design

The assessment of the student's academic results is one of the most challenging tasks in education because it may be subjective, lack clarity and goals. In addition, many professors and institutions have a deficient comprehension of the assessments' purpose and have used the students' grades as a means to determine the reach of the educational objectives. Trying to address that question, the Circuit is an alternative form of assessment based on the interaction and cooperation between students that aims to verify the results of the learning process through ludic activities. This paper presents the results of applying the Circuit in Foundation Design, an undergraduate course of the 5th-year of Civil Engineering at the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz - UESC, in Ilhéus, Brazil, in 2017. The professor decided to use the Circuit in this course as an attempt to enable the students to interact and share what they have learned with their classmates. By doing so, the professor considered the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, from Vygotsky, assessing the students’ ability to deal with problems with the help of their peers and learn with them. The method, although containing many rules, was easy to apply. The students, divided into groups of three, were expected to create two reports based on data for one Standard Penetration Test – SPT - and one Cone Penetration Test – CPT. Each member of the group played a different role on the activity: the "engineer" produced the report; the "technician" completed the missing data of the tests; the "manager" corrected the final reports. After completing the activity, each student gave feedback on its negative and positive aspects and this information was used to compose the results. From the results, the method showed to be effective because more than half the students pointed out that it developed their sense of responsibility and was innovative. Conversely, it may have failed with respect to the distribution of time, what may have affected the results of the groups. Therefore, the method proved to be promising, but it still demands some improvements for subsequent applications.

Evaluation of Academic Experience in Learning Education over Simulators Softwares

This article presents an overview of simulated education through computational tools. In recent years, educational institutions have been working even harder in the application of virtual teaching and learning environments, which are available to different undergraduate and technical courses. During the learning process, the student is invited to try out some forms of different subjects and learning contents. The use of technologies gained a great deal of space in these institutions in order to allow students to experiment different theories in practical settings. Simulators allow students to conduct hands-on experiments without the need for real environments, which consequently generates costs and also a planning effort. This paper presents a study of the application of software simulators in different technological courses. After the application of the simulators, the students were invited to answer a Quiz in order to understand the effectiveness of the use of the simulators in the learning of each one. Results show that students considered the use of simulators to be advantageous and important, but it is still not enough to suppress the use of practical classes in real environments.