PIATEC – Projeto de Integração Acadêmica e Tecnológica: uma abordagem interdisciplinar inspirada em PBL

Abstract

The last years, a lot of discussion has taken place concerning learning and teaching methodologies, and particularly on engineering. As far as engineering is concerned, many different approaches have been proposed, and the spectrum goes from works dealing with the curriculum of courses to works related to the proposal of new teaching methodologies (e. g., PBL, CDIO, just to quote some), in addition to some individual ad-hoc approaches. At the same time, the exponential technological advances in the last decade, have add up pressure on those discussions, insomuch as the engineering’s courses curriculum has had to keep up with that. As a result, a very important issue concerns the balance between theory and practical activities in an engineering course. On the other hand, it is a fact that the complexity of engineering projects has increased a lot, to the point that the professional of one specific engineering area must deal not only with technical aspects of its area, but also with those ones related to other ones. On the top of that, the engineer must consider in the project other aspects such as environmental and psychological issues. In this paper is discussed a proposal of a discipline with PBL ingredients and multi/interdisciplinary aspects as a way of dealing with the questions above and that emulates an actual engineering scenario to be encounter by the future engineer.