Santiago Urrejola

Experience of cooperative learning in engineering

The objective of this work is to share the authors’ experience towards a different mode of teaching/learning method. Cooperative learning (Jigsaw) was employed on the University of Vigos fourth-year engineering students. The results of the experience show that cooperative learning is quite a viable alternative to the classical way of lecturing at the university when the number of students is not too high. The authors’ observation indicates that students did not show a lot of interest towards the new learning style but their resistance changed once they began the activity. The Jigsaw method has proved to be a useful tool for improving the learning process so that students have the opportunity to participate actively in the learning activities.

Colaboración Académica Internacional en Tecnologías de la Información y Docencia Virtual

The founding and development of an international academic collaboration program on information technology and virtual teaching between the University of La Serena in Chile and the University of Vigo in Spain is described and analyzed. The project is financed by the International Development Cooperation Spanish Agency (AECID) within the Interuniversity Cooperation Program between Spain and Ibero America. The project, aimed to improve engineering teaching, is being developed under a general collaboration agreement signed by both universities and that has been active for some years. The tasks done until now are discussed, but most important is that such tasks are analyzed with a long term perspective. The steps that will follow in this project are also defined and the importance of these actions in the formation of the engineers of the XXI century is highlighted.

Adaptation of a virtual campus for mobile learning devices

Currently, almost all Spanish Universities offer their students access to a virtual campus consisting essentially of one or more e-learning platforms, which contain the educational material of most of the subjects taught at the university. Although the aim of these e-learning platforms is the learning in virtual format, mainly they are used by the teachers to supplement the lectures (b-learning). Due to the nature and design of such platforms and learning materials, access to the contents is restricted to the use of personal computers (desktops or laptops with screens large enough). This paper describes the actions in terms of necessaries modification of software to allow access to the contents stored in the virtual campus through various types of mobile devices.

Simulation of VOCs Recovery Process by Absorption

Using a simulation program, an absorption process has been simulated of an air stream contaminated with acetone using water as absorbent and the subsequent recovery of the solvent by distillation. After verifying the effectiveness of the simulated process, the next step was to carry out an economic analysis at the level of equipment to assess the economic viability of the simulated recovery plant.