Changes in the Engineering Curriculum: the PUC-Rio's Experience

SCAVARDA-DO-CARMO, Luiz C., PARISE, Jose A. R., DA SILVEIRA, Marcos A. & DA COSTA, Therezinha S.

Rua Marques de Sao Vicente, 225, 22453-900, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Centro Tecnico Cientifico, Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro, decano@ctc.puc-rio.br, http://www.ctc.puc-rio.br

Abstract: the present paper is concerned with the changes in the engineering curriculum presently underway at PUC-Rio (Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro). Governing principles, pedagogical strategies and changes in content are discussed in detail.

Keywords: engineering education, engineering curriculum

1 Introduction

The proposed curricular reform for the engineering course of PUC-Rio, herein presented, is a result of an intense reflection on the ongoing changes on the job market and on students attitudes and abilities which, together with the social, cultural and economical changes by the end of this century, conducted to the advent of new missions to the University and its formation courses. This reflection starts from the conclusion of several commissions, from Brazil and abroad, who studied the subject, specially with the support of NSF and ABET, in the USA [George et al. 1996], and FINEP, CAPES, CNPq and ABENGE, in the Brazilian side - see reports in, for example, [Scavarda doCarmo et al. 1997] and [Aranha et al. 1998].

Reduction of work positions in large companies, changes in the required aptitude for new engineers, the advent of a new "service society", with a large number of small and medium sized companies, the necessity of taking risks and benefiting from new opportunities, the volatility of new technologies, and even the rapid changes in economical paradigms, all these factors establish a complex background for the extra-mure reality the University must face. On the other hand, internally, the University faces a reality as radically distinct from that of the 70's and 80's, as equally distinct is the today's external actuality. The new student, forged by the post-modern culture, behaves in a way much dissimilar from the near cartesian behavior that characterizes the majority of our faculty.

The proposed curricular reform, to be presented, contemplates, to a certain extent, the understanding of these two faces of the new reality: the world external to the University and the youth, born in this New World. These factors lead the proposed reform to reconsider the structure of the University, its courses, in addition to the pedagogical methodology and engineering course content.

Following, the social changes that affect both University and engineers, at the turn of this century, will be presented, leading to the conclusion on the need for structural, curricular and methodological changes in the engineering courses. After a brief discussion on the feasibility of these changes in a research oriented university, sections 3, 4 and 5 describe the basic structure of the engineering course at PUC-Rio, the proposed body of principles and structural, methodological and curricular modifications. Distinction is made between propositions for the first and final year stages (the so-called Basic and Professional Cycles).

2 New roles for engineers and the University

Engineering education is faced to a challenge that is dictated by a world scenario that demands intensive use of science, technology, communication techniques and entrepreneurial vision. Knowledge and skills in concurrent engineering, re-engineering, total quality and systematic planning, nonexistent in the near past, have become dominant parts of the every day routine of engineering professionals. Working in teams, preparing written reports and oral presentations, to expose or sell ideas, to clients or colleagues, have become usual activities in Engineering. Not to adapt the undergraduate course to this new scenario will jeopardize the student career, and to a certain extent, the development process of the nation. In order to face these necessary changes, a set of

In order to meet these needed changes, a set of competencies and abilities, to be developed in the student during his/her formation years in the University, was defined (ABENGE, 1998; ABET, 1998; and also discussed by Scavarda do Carmo et al., 1997). They are:

• preparation for a professional life of self-learning, based on methodologies that lead to "learn how to learn".
• preparation for a professional life taking higher risks, requiring a market vision and entrepreneurial sense, to be employed, eventually, in small firms or to run companies of their own.
• capacity to conceive and analyze systems, products and processes, using adequate methods;
• capacity to plan, elaborate, coordinate and supervise projects;
• capacity to analyze and interpret results;
• systemic vision;
• proficient on "infotechnologies" and other tools for the practice of engineering;
• proficient on oral, written, graphical and iconic communication;
• capacity to understand the managing, ambient related, legal, economical, social and cultural aspects of engineering problems.

In addition, the student has changed. Part of an over protected generation, he/she is used to have his/her problems solved by others. Always ready to "fight for his/her rights", lives in a world full of attractions, external to the University, generally presented in spectacular forms. They do not accept impositions without explanations, and react to boring, "chalk and talk" classes, forcing the teacher to be at great pains to keep the student concentration. Job position is a priority right from the beginning of the course, not allowing him/herself to waste time, forging a student that looks for immediate results. Their values are different from those of the University, even though they may not be aware of the fact. Furthermore, their skills in modern techniques, such as the Internet, use of telecommunications, video games, etc, are far greater than those of their teachers!

In view of this situation, conventional methods of teaching and learning are showing signs of exhaustion. They do not prepare the professional that the job market expects, as demonstrated in the ICEE98 (the market takes what is available, but it is not satisfied). The appeal of engineering courses to prospective students has also decreased, as indicated the drastic decrease in candidates and a high evasion rate.

Thus, the need for changes in objectives and methods for engineering courses, the subject of former papers (Scavarda do Carmo et al., 1997; Aranha et al., 1998), which are highlighted below:

• deepening student's understanding of the interrelationships between market forces, business strategy and technological change;
• early exposure of students to engineering challenges through hands-on courses;
• strengthening student's life-learning capabilities and other marketable skills such as leadership, innovation capability, communication and computer literacy;
• improving the university's linkage mechanisms with the community, so as to enhance cooperation with industry and local governments in such areas as technology development, start-up of small firms and teacher training programs directed to primary and secondary education.

The first three items lead to the fourth: the formation of an entrepreneurial engineer with a market vision which requires the University building an also entrepreneurial environment, inserted in the community and connected, in one hand, with elementary and secondary schools and, on the other hand, with industries and companies, without, it must be stressed, relinquishing its research-university nature. Production of knowledge continues as one of the University's ultimate mission, now added by the mission of developing ideas and products in consonance with industry and companies, see mode II of knowledge production in (Gibbons, 1998). This theme has been extensively developed in (Aranha et al., 1998), where a discussion is made on the difficulties of transforming a research university, where the ethos of the "pure" scientist predominates, into a completely different environment, of the entrepreneurial engineer with a business vision. To a certain extent, the new university professor must realize that, while doing research as the main activity, his/her efforts for obtaining research funds, attracting good students and producing results of general acceptance, have already made him/her a truly entrepreneur. (Aranha et al., 1998) discuss the methodology for forming an entrepreneurial engineer, which includes:

• requirement of entrepreneurial attitude in hands-on disciplines (team work with presentations to "clients" from industry; problems chosen for typical market niches; see (Silveira et al., 1998);
• creation of three courses on entrepreneurship: the first develops the entrepreneurial attitude in the student, the second involve market simulations, making the students organizing business plans, and the third is related to case studies, carried out within engineering specialization, in the final years;
• participation in the Junior Company, where students do business, under the supervision of professors and with commercial actions regulated by the university;
• incubators of companies: just six companies are accommodated each semester, however the impact is the student population is significant.

In the following items the curricular changes, under way in the Engineering Course at PUC-Rio, encompassing the above mentioned structural changes and aiming to answer the challenge of the present times, are presented.

3 Structure of the Engineering Course at PUC-Rio

In order to understand the proposed changes in the Engineering Course of PUC-Rio, it is necessary to comprehend its general structure. PUC-Rio is a research university that congregates the departments of engineering and basic sciences (Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Computation) forming the Center for Sciences and Technology (CTC), under one single direction. Courses are taught by the departments, eventually with multi-departmental teams of professors.

The curricular grid of the undergraduate courses of the CTC is divided into two parts:

• the Basic Cycle, formed by disciplines that are common and compulsory to all undergraduate day courses (the night course, B.Sc. in Computation, does not fall under this rule), with a expected duration of four semesters;
• the Professional Cycle, with a duration of six semesters, is composed by disciplines that define each course (e.g., Mechanical Engineering or B.Sc. in Mathematics) and specialization (e.g., structures or soil mechanics, in Civil Engineering).

As the student is admitted to PUC-Rio, he/she is automatically enrolled in the Basic Cycle and must undertake the associated disciplines, during a period of, at least, four semesters. In case of not succeeding in completing this set of disciplines in maximum stipulated period, he/she is allowed to enroll in not more than one discipline of the Professional Cycle. This rule applies as long as all the credits of the Basic Cycle are obtained. The main objectives of the Basic Cycle are:

• To allow the student who ingress in the CTC of PUC-Rio for making his career decision after a period of time, that may take two to three semesters. This measure avoids precipitated decisions, carried out at a time when the student do not fully realize the real content of each habilitation (e.g., Mechanical or Civil Engineering) or specialization (such as Systems or Telecommunications within Electrical Engineering);
• To facilitate integration of students and faculty from different departments, building, gradually, a real interdisciplinary structure;
• To guarantee a nucleus of knowledge, common to all students of the CTC;
• To use this group of disciplines as a preparation that allows the students to reach a level of maturity before entering departmental life.

The Professional Cycle, on top of requiring the student undertaking a group of disciplines that are compulsory for the habilitation, presents a few characteristics, worth describing below:

• A reasonable amount of "elective" disciplines, the majority of them to be chosen within the proposed habilitation;
• The existence of "horizontal habilitations", the curricula of which make use of disciplines from other habilitations of the Center. Such is the case of habilitations like, Automation and Control Engineering (taking disciplines from Mechanical, Chemical and Electrical Engineering courses), Mechanical-Production or Civil-Production Engineering, among others.

In spite of gathering a good acceptance from Faculty and students, criticisms on the above structure were raised, which included:

• Students wished to get closer to their future engineering course at an earlier stage of the Basic Cycle;
• Some professors believed that the amount of hours allocated to the courses that compose the Basic Cycle was excessive, thus limiting the possibilities of expansion of the disciplines of the Professional Cycle;
• Faculty and students showed, in different ways, that methodology and courseware used in the disciplines were beyond their expectations, requiring some modernization;
• Faculty from engineering departments complained that students were not able to make use of the knowledge in basic sciences to model and solve engineering problems.

4 Methodological and Curricular Changes in the Basic

Criticism from faculty and students, as well as the educational objectives to be met, was taken into account, were taken into account to apply a set of general principles, leading to the following body of changes:

• Newcomers (freshmen) were separated according to their specific academic aptitudes: (1) a "lighter" load of disciplines were allocated for those students who presented poorer results in the admission exam, with some disciplines specially designed to correct their deficiencies; (2) on the other hand, students who best performed at the exam are enrolled in a special class of Calculus, where they are demanded according to their expectations; (3) Finally, the remainder of the students are enrolled in a standard package of disciplines;
• Mechanisms, to recover freshmen's observed deficiencies, were implemented with the introduction of two disciplines: Portuguese (to improve written communication skills) and Introductory Physics (a metrology course for freshmen, introducing them to concrete physical problems);
• Early contact of the student with Engineering was established through "Introduction to Engineering", a hands-on discipline for freshmen (see Costa et al., 1998), and by offering disciplines of the Professional Cycle as early as the third semester;
• Inquiry-based courses were offered in the first semesters, to instigate students into a scientific attitude, specially through modeling courses, widening horizons in the subject;
• Part of the basic sciences content is to offered in the Professional Cycle, on a just-in-time basis, eventually oriented to the engineering habilitation, taught by engineer professors. This is to be done without sacrificing the "solid scientific formation", common to all careers, to be offered by the Basic Cycle. For instance, a balance is to be sought between "structural" Physics (as preferred by the physicists) and Physics in support of modeling of engineering problems (as needed by the engineers).
• A position was created for an ombudsman, to channel students' complaints.

Some of these initiatives have already taken place, as follows: disciplines Introduction to Calculus and Introduction to Engineering (Costa et al., 1998), use of hands-on methodology (Silveira et al., 1988) and the creation of the ombudsman, believed to be the best way of swiftly characterizing problems between students and faculty.

5 Changes in the Professional Cycle

The following measures are proposed for the Professional Cycle.

• Systematic superposition should be avoided within the same subject;
• The number of compulsory/conventional disciplines should be reduced, and the number of optional disciplines, increased. This would allow the student to define, within the limits of the course structure and under supervision of the Faculty, his/her own profile.
• The total number of hours to fulfill curricular requirements should be reduced, making one habilitation to be undertaken in four and a half years. The "remaining" semester could be used for the student to start up a Master degree or to pursue a double habilitation (e.g., mechanical engineering and automation and control engineering).
• The habit of undertaking two habilitations should be encouraged among students.
• The integration between the undergraduate courses and post-graduate should be encouraged, attracting our best students to PostGraduate Program.
• The habit of undertaking two habilitations (for example, Mechanical Engineering and Control and Automation Engineering) should be disseminated;
• Integration of Graduation with Post-Graduation (a tradition of more than 30 years at PUC-Rio) should be pushed even further, to attract, among other things, the best under-graduate students to the university's post-graduate program;
• In order to improve university-industry integration and to direct the student to the job market, curricula should introduce the "integral trainee program", where students spend the whole semester at convened companies;
• Scientific initiation assignments and engagements in university projects should be encouraged;
• The teaching process should be revisited, where the introduction of design and/or seminar based disciplines should be encouraged, thus preparing the student, in a more concrete and earlier way, for the real world;
• Concurrent methods of teaching (Silveira and Scavarda do Carmo, 1998) should be used in the design based disciplines
• More web-based disciplines should be implemented, with an additional effort to integrate them through virtual library network system;
• A regular search fort the improvement of the current education methodology should be accomplished;
• Entrepreneurship development courses should be available to all students;

6 Concluding Remarks

Shortage of space precludes the full presentation of the resulting modifications to the curricular grid. This can be requested directly from the authors or to CTC/PUC-Rio (http://www.ctc.puc-rio.br). In spite of the fact that some of these initiatives have already been implemented and assessed, the global evaluation of the proposed alterations can only be fully evaluated after a number of years, following consultation to the faculty, students, candidates for admission, alumni and the job market.

The authors believe that the engineer formation will be accomplished through the demands to which he/she will be exposed along the course (oral and written presentations, entrepreneurial attitude, etc), rather than from pure information (supposedly transmitted) about a specific subject.

There still remains to establish the way business and administration will be taught to all students, as well as the development of their capacity in planning, elaborate, coordinate and supervise engineering projects. Also, Production Engineering presents disciplines that do not accept general application to all students, which may explain how popular they have become. Other departments are seeking alternatives, along with proposed changes to disciplines involving Administration, Law and Engineering and Philosophy for Sciences.

7 List of Abbreviations

References