Active Learning Approach for Engineering in Collaboration with the Corporate World

This paper presents the work carried out in the Department of Electronic Technology (University of Vigo) during the ten-year life of 'Electronic System Reliability', a subject that is included in the final year of the Telecommunication Engineering degree (Electronics speciality). We explain the approach adopted, which in addition to using traditional methods adds a new framework that involves industry to improve the students' rate of learning. Local companies play a key role by actively collaborating in the process. The knowledge obtained by the students for developing part of their training within the company gives them an experience that would otherwise be impossible to achieve in the classroom alone. On the other hand, the company acquires contributions from the students on issues related to Dependability, something to which the technicians can net,er devote enough time. Furthermore, the students often bring to the company another point of view, which can be interesting, in looking at a given issue. The results achieved show this methodology to be very interesting for engineering studies, particularly in the final year disciplines as long as there is an industrial environment that is willing to collaborate.