UTNBA participated in the Ibero American Forum on Engineering and Society

UTNBA teachers presented two works at the Ibero American Forum on Engineering and Digital Society, held in Oviedo, Spain.

They were conducted by teachers of the Engineering and Society course of UTNBA.

One of the presentations was entitled “The relationship between Science, Technology and Society (STS) studies and Sustainable Development: a superior view in higher education through strategies based on simulation games”, delivered by Lic. Karina Cardaci, Milena Ramallo, MA, Prof. Gerardo Denegri, and Lic. Hugo Alejandro Izaguirre.

The other work presented was “Engineering and Society: contributions from STS studies to engineering education”, delivered by Milena Ramallo, MA; Prof. Elida Clara Repetto; Prof. María Celia Gayoso; and Rosa Giacomino, MA.

STS Studies and Sustainable Development

 “The relationship between Science, Technology and Society (STS) studies and Sustainable Development: a superior view in higher education through strategies based on simulation games” analyzes the relationship between those studies and the education of engineering students from a sustainable development perspective, using simulation games.

Milena Ramallo, one of the authors of the work, explained that “it aims to present a new thinking model about science and technology impacted by sustainable development. This makes us think of Engineering in relation to other fields in a changing and dynamic world, which leads us to reconsider our traditional view about Engineering as an emblematic discipline in the production of scientific-technological knowledge.”

The teachers explored an innovative teaching methodology based on simulation games.

“The project addresses the teaching of sustainability through new strategies. We chose to explore and keep digging in the use of simulation games. This project seeks to explore an innovative and still little known methodology in order to implement it as a didactic-pedagogic proposal,” Ramallo explained.

The teacher also stated that simulation games offer the possibility of representing a real situation in the classroom, through which the students have to develop competences such as the formulation of hypotheses, conjectures, and decision making.

“We propose simulation games, such as role plays, in which the students are part of a company board of directors. Each has a different job title and has to make decisions to determine the policy of the company in relation to, for example, the installation electrical power through solar panels in a given community,” she stated.

Another case described by Ramallo was the work with Legos: “one of the most innovative experiences for us was the incorporation of Legos from the Lego Education Brand, inspired by the use of this teaching methodology born at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Adopting this learning theory known as constructionism, we took the contributions from Lego and asked the students to build a small-sized weighing scale for which they had to follow a series of instructions in order to build the device.”

Contribution of STS studies to the education of engineers

The work “Engineering and Society: contributions from STS studies to engineering education” was conducted by Milena Ramallo, MA; Prof. Elida Repetto; Prof. María Celia Gayoso; and Rosa Giacomino, MA, with the aim to incorporate this approach to the Engineering and Society class in UTN’s undergraduate engineering programs.

The professors analyzed the relationship between science and technology in terms of a new view of engineering based on sustainable development. The objective of the work was also to help students develop the ability of understanding the world where they live and the challenges they will have to face as engineers.

Prof. Élida Repetto, one of the work authors, explained that “in general, technology is still associated to artifacts, not actions; we think of development and impacts. This approach, in contrast, gives us a vision of technology which does not fall in reductionisms such as considering it an artifact.”