Educational innovation for teaching and learning of Chemistry in the Degree of Civil Engineering

Abstract

There is a concern among professionals and teachers of scientific and technological Degrees for the lack of vocations for this type of study. In order to mitigate this problem to some extent, Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and some Educational Innovation Groups, formed by Chemistry teachers, have been worked for some years on the organization of several activities to promote the relation among different educational levels, mainly early High School and University. On the other hand, different teaching materials have been developed in order to encourage the motivation and ease the learning of the basic subjects of the first-year of university studies by the students of UPM, with tools or resources such as Punto de Inicio, OpenCourseWare (OCW), Puesta a Punto, at an institutional level. Furthermore, some Educational Innovation Groups have created audiovisual materials (lab practice videos) and virtual lab practices for the learning of Chemistry, as well as games such as Math-Trivial, Physic-Trivial, Drawing-Trivial and Chemical-Trivial. These tools are available on the Internet, as free access web spaces.