(1171)EVALUATION OF TUTORING IN AN EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECT OFCHEMICAL ENGINEERING BASED ON PROJECT ORIENTEDLEARNING

摘要

Active methodologies are becoming now particularly relevant in the teaching-learning context markedby the Europe convergence process (Bologna). One of such active methodologies is project orientedlearning. By the application of this methodology, students undertake a project in group to solve acertain problem which includes different stages like information searching, planning, alternativeassessment and design or final resolution. Some advantages of this methodology are the possibility toacquire professional working skills, the development of self-learning, decision making and theimprovement of motivation, since the projects are applied to specific situations very similar toprofessional practice. For all these reasons, project oriented learning has been applied in “AdvancedExperimentation”, an annual subject of fourth year in the degree of Chemical Engineering.In this subject, students complete a design of an industrial plant using the data obtained in thelaboratory experiments conducted in parallel. Besides the study of industrial process, students shouldconsider other multidisciplinary aspects in the design such as waste management and industrialsafety.During the project development, tutoring sessions conducted by lecturers are essential to getsatisfactory results. In these tutoring sessions, each lecturer guides students in the development of theproject and monitories the evolution of working group throughout the course. Tutoring sessions arearranged in different parts for better coordination and for sharing the workload. Tutoring for eachlaboratory session is undertaken by the lecturer who has taught it;;tutoring of the overall projectstructure is shared among all lecturers trying to have the same number of groups;;finally, each lectureris responsible of tutoring some relevant sections of the project (design, waste management andindustrial safety).In order to improve and make more effective tutoring work, this academic year, lecturers havesystematized the collection of data from the evolution and development of tutoring sessions. Lecturershave registered the number of tutorials per group, the approximate time spent in each tutorial, and thedistribution of tutorials along the semester for each group. On the other hand, lecturers have designedan evaluation survey about tutoring sessions that students have completed at the end of the semester.In this paper, we analyse the results about tutoring sessions of the first semester of year 2011-12, interms of tutoring development and student evaluation.