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Abstract This paper presents an extracurricular rather than engineering or sciences degrees. Finally,
program called INSPIRE3 that has been implemented by engineering degrees are not considered an option by a
the ETSEIAT (Escola Tcnica Superior dEnginyeries great number of women.
Industrial i Aeronutica de Terrassa), a center belonging to In order to address the two above mentioned
the UPC-BarcelonaTech (Universitat Politcnica de challenges, INSPIRE3 program has been created and
Catalunya). This program is mainly addressed to facilitate developed in ETSEIAT since 2009. This program is an
cross-curricular skills and abilities development among opportunity to bring vocational students through
students through collaborative-project based learning. The innovative teaching method that enables collaborative
projection of an attractive external image of engineering
learning based on real technology-based projects
degrees offered by ETSEIAT in order to increase the
implementation. INSPIRE3 encourages the
enrollment in such degrees is a secondary goal of this
entrepreneurial spirit, as well as cross-curricular skills
program. Under INSPIRE3, several real, challenging and
and abilities development. On the other hand, the goals
multidisciplinary engineering projects are currently under
development. In this paper, INSPIRE3 motivation, program
achieved by this projects can be used a as a powerful tool
management and implementation process are described and
to promote engineering and science studies among
a short description of projects under development is given college students.
as well This paper is organized as follows. In Section II the
goals, structure and outcome of the program are
Keywords Professional skills, Engineering teaching, explained. Section III provides a short description of
Projects development. some of the undergoing projects. Finally, Section IV
summarizes the obtained results and provides future
I. INTRODUCTION guidelines for the program.
The implementation of the EHEA (European Higher II. PROGRAM STRUCTURE
Education Area) requires fostering cross-curricular skills
The INSPIRE3 is officially supported and conducted
and abilities development such as critical thinking,
by the ETSEIAT of the Universitat Politcnica de
communication skills, leadership, project and budget
Catalunya since 2009. At present, three engineering
management, negotiation, team-work, etc. It is obvious
degrees (Industrial Technologies, Aerospace
that this kind of concepts can not be taught and learned in
Technologies and Aerospace Vehicles) and 4 Masters in
the same way that the previous EHEA-era regular
Engineering (Management, Automatics and Electronics,
subjects. The traditional teaching approach focused in the
Industrial Engineering and Aerospace Engineering) are
lecturer instead of student often leads to some
taught at ETSEIAT. The number of students enrolled in
disappointing results among the most vocational students.
these programs is 2.500 approximately. The originality of
The change from traditional procedures to the new
INSPIRE3 lies in real projects technology-based
student-focused approach represents a major challenge in
development in order to recreate a real professional
the design of the curricula for EHEA degrees.
activity, where a single engineer must interact with many
Project-based Learning (PBL) is a methodology widely other profiles and professional issues.
used to promote skills development [1-6]. This kind of
approach can be also applied to power electronics A. Program guidelines
contents successfully [7,8]. Some engineering schools The name of the program is an acronym of INitiative
have implemented a curricula fully based on PBL [9]. addressed to Students to develop Projects that are
However, the most common approach consists of Innovative and Real in a new Experience in Engineering
development of some short projects (two or three) that Education. The main features of INSPIRE3 program are
complement the regular lectures as students proceed in as follows:
their studies. - Volunteer enrollment. The participation in the
On the other hand, the enrollment of new students in program is absolutely volunteer. Nobody is pushed to
engineering degrees experiences a decrease in all participate in the program. In this way all students that
developed countries. This is a complex phenomena that want to be involved are really motivated and show a high
has several reasons. The culture of effort among youth commitment.
has been sadly displaced by easy success, especially - Activity out of the official academic curricula. Project
when engineering studies are perceived to be too hard development is out of the official curricula. This could
and too long. For this reason, highschool students often seem a little bit disappointing for enrollment. However
prefer some other options with a better profit/effort we have implemented some ways to facilitate some
ratio such as economics, law or business management academic acknowledgment. For instance, in the official
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students are already working as professionals or
following PhD or Master degrees abroad. In all cases,
they have passed a selection process. The goal of this
survey is to evaluate the perception they have about the
benefits they got for its participation in INSIRE3 projects.
Preliminary results indicate that they feel that
involvement in such program was an important factor to
succeed in this selection processes. On the other hand,
some informal contact with employers supports this
perception. Employers specially underline the
commitment, leadership and professional behavior as the
main features they found among this kind of students.
As it has been mentioned in Section I, one of the goals
of the program is to address the problem of enrollment in
engineering degrees by means of engineering promotion Fig. 2 ACC2011 team members with their airplane
among high school students. Social networks, such as
Facebook or Tweeter, or Youtube are simple and Solar Endeavour: This team has adapted a commercial
tremendous effective way to widespread the progress and glider to a solar-powered model aircraft in order to be
achievement of projects. For this reason, each team has used as a range-extended surveillance vehicle. The first
intensively used these kind of tools to show their projects. flight took place in August 2011. In this flight they
achieved up to 6 hours of continuous flight, which is a
At this point it is important to mention the involvement new Spanish record. Fig. 3 shows a picture where solar
of women in INSPIRE3 projects. The percentage of panels covering upper surface of wings are clearly
women participating in this program is the same in the visible. Fig. 3 also shows the cockpit for piloting the
degrees, which is about 17%. However, they play an airplane. The most remarkable features of this project are
important role as leaders and as inspiring examples for the integration of solar cells in the wings and the
future students. development of a full energy management system (EMS).
Finally, it should be mentioned that once a year there is The EMS controls the energy flux among solar cells,
an open presentation of the projects in order to show batteries and the loads (motors, servocontrolers and
results. This presentation is attended by other students communication systems).
interested in joining the program, faculty members and
sponsors.
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Fig. 4. Public attending CRJET.
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(USA) where the team got the 3rd position in Formula
Hybrid contest.
DS3e.177-5
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the Engineering Classroom. J. Prof. Issues Eng. Educ. Pract. (8) oriented education in power electronics, European Power
p.125-129, DOI:10.1061/(ASCE)1052-3928(1999)125 Electronics and Applications EPE-2009
[6] Dym, C.; Agogino, A.; Eris, O.; Frey, D.; Leifer, L. (2005) [9] Web-page for study information in Aalborg University Denmark,
Engineering Design Thinking, Teaching, and Learning. Journal www.iet.aau.dk.
of Engineering Education, volume 94, issue 1, pages 103-120 [10] Formula SAE International Rules 2012. Society of Automotive
(http://digitalcommons.olin.edu/mech_eng_pub/22/) Engineers International.
[7] M. Kuisma, H. Niemel, Transferable skills and engineering http://students.sae.org/competitions/formulaseries/rules/
practices Case Analog Signal Processing, European Power .
Electronics and Applications EPE-2009
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