Engineering education program promoting the profession

Abstract

Many Engineering colleges have been facing the retention issue because of difficulties and lack of knowledge about what really means being an engineer. The first 3 years are particularly intense and hard. A possible way to overcome this period is to implement a new kind of course, more enticing and dynamic, which is the idea of COPEC´s engineering education research team, to embed a course with a more interesting activity for students in the first year. Current students have access to multiple ways of learning. They make use of a range of learning sites, both physical and virtual. Currently, students are very smart users of modern technology and are well connected with the online world. They are already international. However, an international experience adds a lot to their reality. It also promotes an early picture of the profession in their minds. So, this program provides students the possibility to perform as engineers in an international environment. It is a project developed for a private university in order to foster the retention rate in their engineering courses.