Aprendizagem baseada em projetos e design thinking aplicados à melhoria do ensino e aprendizagem no âmbito da engenharia elétrica

Abstract

The education and training of engineers based on traditional teaching and learning methods, centered on the teacher and lectures, produces professionals with a solid scientific foundation; but does not develop the cognitive skills necessary to face the challenges of everyday life and to meet the demands of the current job market. In this sense, it is necessary to rethink teaching methods to meet the current demands of the job market and prepare students for the challenges of the 21st century. Current professional skills require improved and constantly evolving scientific knowledge, including digital and interpersonal skills. This is important both for interacting with coworkers and for dealing with machines that are becoming increasingly autonomous due to the Industrial Revolution 5.0. This work aims to propose a methodology based on applied projects and design thinking to improve teaching and learning in the field of electrical engineering; such methodology was developed and applied based on Project-Based Learning and Design Thinking, two active methods. These active methodologies place the student as the protagonist of the teaching and learning process and the proposed combination of their characteristics in this work aims to improve this process and to develop in students the skills and abilities demanded by the current job market. The proposed method is based on the design of projects with the objective of applying electrical engineering to solve everyday problems; to this end, in the context of a discipline in the course curriculum, teams are created to develop solutions for the given problem. The solutions must cover the contents of the discipline and may include other topics to encourage the student to lead the teaching and learning process; at the end, the solutions are presented and applied by the teams. When applying the proposed methodology, the average approval rate of the disciplines worked showed an improvement of 7.57%; in the perception of 63.6% of the students, the application of the proposed methodology led to a change in their way of “learning”, which contributed to the improvement of their academic performance. Furthermore, in relation to students, the proposed methodology promoted an average development of 60.3% in the skills and abilities required for the 21st century job market. The proposed methodology proves to be an effective alternative in the educational context and can be applied in other courses, as it increases academic performance through student protagonism. In addition, it prepares students for the cognitive demands of the job market, without neglecting curricular knowledge.