Banca de DEFESA: RODRIGO DE PAIVA CIRILO

PROJECT-BASED LEARNING IN LIGHT OF THE STEM PERSPECTIVE: INTERVENTION IN AN ENGINEERING CLASS 

engineering education, project-based learning, STEM, engineering design
process, NVivo

The curricular guidelines for engineering courses, in force since 2019, brought the
desire for a differentiated profile for graduates, centralizing the teaching and learning
processes on the student and bringing them closer to the current demands of the
productive sector and current issues for life in society. The objective of this research
seeks to understand the limits and potential of an intervention in the classroom using
project-based learning as a strategy based on the STEM Perspective, whose
implementation followed the steps delimited by the engineering design process. This
is an exploratory and qualitative investigation, which used methodological procedures
for constructing and conducting case studies. To analyze the data, we used the
NVivo program, whose inferences are inspired, with certain adaptations, by the
dictates of content analysis. The composition of the data collection instruments is
formed by a focus group interview with representatives of the groups participating in
the intervention and by Conceptual Panels, a type of infographic created by students
of the Engineering Topics discipline, a curricular component of the second period of
the Engineering course. Electronics from UFRPE / UACSA. There was also an
evaluation of the projects in relation to the STEM areas, carried out by the teacher
under the guidance of a table of rubrics. The results indicated that, despite the
weakness in relation to mathematics, the integration between STEM areas during the
project's course can be verified, and students recognize this type of intervention as
useful for teaching engineering, especially in relation to aspects focused on the
professional profile of the approach, the opportunity to carry out practical tasks, the
preparation for assembling electronic circuits, the division of tasks between group
members and the planning of activities for the development of projects. It is hoped
that this investigation will motivate other research that will calibrate the work on
mathematical content and leverage propositions such as the inclusion of arts for an
intervention in STEAM and other strategies when designing project solutions.