The Teaching of Metrology: The genesis and the epilogue of a degree

Metrology, as a measurement science and its applications, has a widely recognized importance in all areas of human activity where accurate measurements are required to ensure user confidence and universality. The emergence of new technologies, new methods, new products and new areas of development have definitively placed m etrology as a fundamental s cie nce in all areas of human activity. Associated with the reasons already mentioned, one cannot fail to mention the economic question of globalization that was only possible due to all the activities related to m etrology. As a scientific area, m etrology strengthens the development of measurement capabilities, and plays a key role in innovation, quality assurance of products and decision making. This work approaches the teaching of m etrology in Portugal in the first institution of higher education of the c ountry to offer in its training a bachelor s and a master s degree in Instrumentation and Metrology Engineering. So, this work analyses the past, the present and the future of this branch of engineering from the perspective of the first institution of high er education teaching it in Portugal. The solution to solve the gaps found was to diversify the offer of metrology training, but also to spread the importance of this science to students in other study cycles.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Fomento de las competencias experimentales utilizando recursos complementarios

[EN]The use of ICT in the academic context is a reality, in the world we live in. The young generation of students is digital native, being immersed in a virtual world during a considerable part of their day. This has an impact in their life, including on their education. In undergraduate engineering education laboratory classes are an integral part of its curriculum. These days, many laboratory classes combine traditional hands-on labs with online labs (remote and virtual labs) and several experimental resources. A “blended” or “hybrid” approach to experimental learning seems the most effective to (students’) experimental learning and the development of competences. Still this technologically mediated resource affects the way students learn and in the literature there is still a lack of works, considering the characterization of didactical implementations using a “blended” or “hybrid” approach and its impact in students’ learning and the way they construct their knowledge. In the Electric and Electronic Engineering topic and using the remote laboratory VISIR there are really very few works, reported in literature, describing some small scaled didactical experiments. The problematic which motivated this work was the need to understand the impact of different didactical approaches using this methodology (simultaneous use of several experimental resources) has on students’ academic results. Ultimately this work intends to contribute to fill a gap identified in the literature: identify factors (including some eventual students’ characteristics) which affect students’ learning and engagement in the electric and electronic circuits topic using the remote lab VISIR along with other complementary resources. To accomplish this end, four research questions where posed, each of them taking into account a set of factors in a specific field of inquiry and its influence on students’ results. The first research question approached the way the several experimental resources could be combined and its effect on students. The second dealt with the influence of the proposed VISIR tasks characteristics on students’ results. The third tackled important teacher mediation traces that could be linked to better students’ performance. And finally, the last research question investigates if there were students’ characteristics that were more associated with good learning outcomes and engagement. Considering the former objectives, it was chosen a multi-case study research methodology, using a mixed method approach, resourcing mainly to questionnaire, interview, documental analysis and observation as data gathering methods, and statistical analysis (descriptive and inferential) and content analysis, as data analysis techniques. A large-scale study analysis was conducted, including 26 courses (in a total of 43 didactical implementations using VISIR, as some of the courses have undergone more than one course implementation edition), comprising 1794 students and involving 52 different teachers. This study took place in several Higher Education Institutions (and at a minor extent, in some Technological and High Schools) in Argentina, Brazil and Portugal. In the southern hemisphere these didactical implementations happened in the 2016 and 2017 academic years while in the northern hemisphere it was possible to collect data from three semesters between 2016/17 and 2018/19 academic years. The study focused on analysing each didactical implementation (their characteristics, teachers’ usage and perception) and the matching students’ results (usage, academic results and perception). Ethical questions to guarantee both students’ and teachers’ privacy was taken care of, when using the data of the participants. The former data was only used for the purposes of this study and the state of the participation was reflected anonymously, which can be observed both in the information collected for the analysis as well as in the transcripts along the text. The study included the analysis of the collected data from various sources, the interpretation of its results using several analysis techniques, and the convergence in a process of triangulation. These results, after discussed with literature, allowed to answer in the most possible complete way the four research questions. Based on them, conclusions were drawn to identify factors that may foster students’ learning and engagement. The study also contributed to the advancement of knowledge in this research area. It allowed to conclude that VISIR and this methodology can be as useful for introductory courses as for more advanced ones (dealing with this thematic) as long as teachers plan the didactical implementation according to the type of course and students’ background. Plus, this methodology based upon VISIR can be applied with high success to courses that do not have an experimental component, nor its contents are directly related to the Electricity and Electronics topic. In these courses VISIR can be used with the purpose of contextualization, providing more interesting and appealing learning environments (e.g. theoretical mathematical courses). Finally, both teachers’ perception and students’ results suggest VISIR target public seems to be the students that require more support in their learning, that is, the students still struggling with difficulties than the more proficient students

Higher Education Competences versus Companies Professional Needs in Engineering

This paper presents the result of the incorporation of Work Integrated Learning programs in a higher education master of the School of Engineering of Porto. Its starts by making a state of the art analysis related to the subject, checking the results of other international institutions. It is presented the way of organizing the collection of internships in industrial companies and institutions, which have needs for engineers in the areas of instrumentation and metrology. It summarizes and presents the information on the situation of students that, by the end of the first academic year can opt for a professional internship in a company or by a research project conducted in ISEP laboratories. Finally, the results achieved during the study period are presented, confirmed by feedback from students and companies supervisors. The good results achieved, regarding the competencies acquired by students during the master, were also confirmed by the fact that students are hired by the companies to continue their work after the end of professional training.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio