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The Faculties of Engineering Sciences at Universidad Católica del Norte in Chile regard teacher training as a necessary tool for its academics' professional development and as a fundamental way to improve their teaching quality. The Teaching Unit for Innovation in Engineering (UIDIN) has developed a new curriculum and training programme which seeks to support the faculty in its implementation. This article presents some of the outcomes of a study aimed at qualitatively examining the development of the faculty's conceptions and philosophy of teaching and improvements in pedagogical competencies as a result of the implementation and transfer of the training programme. The teaching philosophy is described in different ways, but overall it considers teaching an act of disciplinary knowledge transfer based on students' interests, skills and attitudes, and with a heavy emphasis on building students' core values. Interviews reveal changes in the participants' learning and competencies due to the training, along with a positive impact on the teachers' lesson planning assessment strategies, students' feedback and the willingness to engage in more reflexive teaching practice. [Paper presented at the International Conference on University Teaching and Innovation (CIDUI): Learning and Teaching Innovation Impacts (9th, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain, Jul 5-7 2016.)]

This article describes a teaching experience in which information and communication technologies were applied in five industrial engineering courses at the Universidad de Tarapaca in Chile. The paper compares the performance and course pass rates of the e-learning platform and portable pocket PC platform with those of the same courses teaching in traditional classroom methods. Two of the courses involving 62 students used an e-learning platform and its associated pedagogical model, while the other three, covering 110 students, employed a portable Pocket PC platform and a collaborative pedagogical model. The results show that there is no statistical evidence that technology rise the students marks, but did reveal significant improvements in course pass rates. (Contains 5 tables and 4 figures.)

The evolution of Chilean assessment of higher education institutions is described and analysed. Focus is put on a systemic description of assessment subjects, so that different evaluation approaches can be compared. This paper stresses the relevance of the quality assurance approach, which has been taken as a model for the now oncoming institutional accreditation. Its foreseeable impact on engineering schools is stressed. The new accreditation approach brings in new challenges for engineering schools, related with improving knowledge about causal relationships among stated purposes, activities, resources, outcomes and social impacts. (Contains 2 figures.)

Background: Effective learning in computer programming courses has been a constant challenge for university teachers and has become a relevant competence for current professionals. The literature on gamification in learning presents mixed results, mainly due to problems in instructional design and inconsistency in gamification. Studies with positive empirical results on computer programming formative activities and showing under what conditions gamification is effective still need to be included. Objectives: This study aimed to quantify the effects of gamification techniques in software tools that support computer programming learning applied to data‐structures university students. The study focused on determining whether there are differences in learning when using gamification techniques in online exercising formative activities. The effects of gamification on learning objectives with diverse complexity are studied. Methods: The study was conducted on computer engineering university students following a pretest‐intervention‐posttest design. They were divided into control and experimental groups, where both used a bank of exercises in Moodle to support learning. The experimental group considered gamification techniques, including points, leaderboards, and badges. Results and Conclusions: Gamification techniques significantly outperformed in learning gains in exercising activities without gamification. Regarding learning complexity, increasing taxonomic complexity did not negatively affect gamification learning effects. Lay Description: What is currently known about the subject matter?: Gamification has been explored as a strategy to enhance learning motivation in various educational contexts, including computer programmingLiterature shows mixed quantitative results on learning improvements under gamification.Few studies cover formative exercises, deal with computer programming tasks, or use a LMS like Moodle.Lack of literature exploring the conditions for effective gamification use, and involving learning objective complexity. What does this paper add to the existing body of research?: Quantifies the impact of gamification techniques on learning outcomes, specifically focusing on computer‐programming in university.Provides empirical evidence on gamification significantly improving learning gains compared to non‐gamified data‐structures exercisesGamification is effective in tasks of diverse levels of taxonomic complexity, with consistent effectiveness regardless of learning difficulty. Implications of study findings for practitioners: Gamification techniques, can be used in higher education to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes in computer programmingThe gamification information (e.g. points and ranking) do not require an automatic update, can be processed manually and published daily.It is effective to use gamification for learning tasks of medium‐high difficulty in Moodle on computer programming topics.It is key a thoughtful instructional design when applying gamification, ensuring alignment with learning objectives and task complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution offers reflections about Chilean Cybersyn, 50 years ago. In recent years, Cybersyn, has received significant attention. It was the brainchild of Stafford Beer, who conceived it to support the transformation of the Chilean economy from its bureaucratic history to hopefully create a vibrant and modern society, driven by cybernetic tools. These aspects have received much attention in recent times; however, in this contribution, I want to discuss how working in Cybersyn influenced my work after the coup of 1973. Perhaps, for me, its major influence was in the management of complexity, through what I refer here as variety engineering and through the Viable System Model VSM as a paradigm to the management of relationships with implications to enterprises, society and the economy. After the 1973 coup major interest was in technological aspects of Cybersyn such as real-time management and its contribution to decision support and executive information systems. In the late 70s I was personally influenced by information management, but by the early 1980s my work moved towards methodological aspects of how to use the VSM. By 1989 I had created the VIPLAN method (Espejo, 1989). Key questions I attempted to answer were, how to model the complexity of enterprises and their interactions with environmental agents. Later on, in the 1990s and 2000s, the main direction of my work was epistemological, ontological and methodological towards second-order cybernetics and relationships. Only in recent decades the political transformations proposed by Cybersyn have captured the imagination of many commentators. The confluence of social and cultural changes with information technology, data models, artificial intelligence, algorithms and several additional technological developments have challenged the excesses of capitalism, particularly after the banking crisis of 2008–2009. The purpose in this paper is discussing this evolution in the light of those early days in Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results are reported in this paper from a study aimed at evaluating significant competencies in final-year students of some engineering programmes in Chile. The study was carried out by a group of eight universities that were interested in exploring ways to assess learning outcomes such as those demanded by the recent Chilean accreditation system. The authors actively participated in all stages of the study, contributing directly to the design, application and results evaluation of some tests. A sample of 150 students was tested, under conditions that guaranteed the comparability of results. In this paper the authors present results relating to the evaluation of effective communication. The study was backed up by a conceptual model and some hypotheses that are explained and discussed in this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes our experiences using Active Learning in four first-year computer science and industrial engineering courses at the School of Engineering of the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, Chile. This work corresponds to the implementation stage of the curriculum reform using a CDIO-based approach currently underway at the School of Engineering. Before this reform, students had only one introductory course to their field of study, meeting one hour a week. After the reform, computer science students take an Introduction to Computer Science course and a Programming Laboratory. Similarly, the industrial engineering program now includes an Introduction to Industrial Engineering and an Engineering Communication course. These courses have been designed using CDIO standards 1, 4 and 8 as guidelines and have been formulated to include active learning in its many forms such as project-based learning, problem-based learning, case studies, small group discussions, oral presentations and reflective memos. The redesign impact was assessed via anonymous student surveys and reflective memos. Our results show improved student understanding of their professional endeavour and increased student motivation for their engineering programs. Student surveys registered high degrees of satisfaction with active learning techniques, working in teams, and receiving immediate feedback from instructors and peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the role of engineering and research in the environmental licensing process in the light of institutional changes made in Chile since 2010: the creation of the Ministry of Environment and the Environmental Assessment Service. To do this, we will show the challenges posed by these new institutions, the opportunities identified and the work undertaken to address those changes. Finally, the results will be presented taking the Punta Alcalde project as a model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the development of Physics in Chile from the beginnings of the Republic until the year 1960, emphasizing the internal development of the discipline, the evolution of its conception and the transmission of its body of knowledge. This work faces the myth of the non-existent scientific tradition in Chile by showing in the case of Physics a long and sustained development. In this development we distinguish four stages of Physics: (1) As a chapter of Scholastic Philosophy; (2) As a discipline closely related to engineering and real-life problems; (3) As cultural science and base of a scientific view of the world; (4) As a discipline with its own problems, where research becomes a central part of its development. For the science historian the novelty is that this development follows a logic where the local parameters have strong influence as compared to those determined by the universal development of the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our knowledge about the interaction of materials used in aquaculture with biofouling species is largely restricted to sheltered coastal areas. Little is known about the susceptibility and specificity of different materials, or the effectiveness of antifouling (AF) coatings, to the incrustation by large biofouling species in high wave-energy environments. Since these energetic habitats are becoming increasingly targeted by the aquaculture industry, and since there is increasing concerns about the use of harmful antifouling coatings, it is urgent to boost our knowledge about biofouling risks in these environments. Here we assessed whether biofouling composition, main species, and biomass accumulation rates were different among three materials, aluminum, high-density polyethylene (HDPE), and steel A36, and at two different depths of exposed shore in central Chile. We hypothesized that either colonization was material-specific and/or the adhesion of macrofoulers to the different materials (tenacity) was sufficiently different that waves could remove them from some surfaces more than others. Additionally, we evaluated the performance of an antifouling paint widely used in aquaculture operations in Chile. All materials were colonized by macrofouling within three months of exposure, with no significant differences in either species composition, total cover, or the rate of biomass accumulation. No significant settlement of macrofouling was found on plates coated with the antifouling paint after seven months of exposure. The fast growth rates and similar composition of macrofouling suggest that the large differences in roughness and hydrophobic character among materials are not sufficient to produce differential settlement or dislodgement in these biofouling communities. The efficacy of the tested antifouling paint suggest that this paint could be used as reference when testing more environmentally-friendly coatings, such as those using biomimetic approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to develop a better understanding of the underrepresentation of women in science and engineering by analyzing the gender gaps (a) in the interest in pursuing a science degree and (b) on science achievement. We use national-level college admissions data to examine gender differences and to explore the association between these outcomes and the attendance to single-sex or co-educational schools. The Chilean college admissions system provides a unique context to study these gender differences, since applicants who wish to pursue an undergraduate degree in science or engineering are required to take a high-stakes standardized science achievement test as part of the admission battery. This test has three subjects: biology, physics, and chemistry, and applicants must choose to be tested in only one of them. Significant gender differences exist for the examinees in their choice of subject and achievement on (the tests). Gender gaps favoring males are observed in the three forms. Both interest and achievement in science are associated with the sex composition of the school attended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on a controversial gold mining project in Chile, this article examines how engineers and other mining professionals perceive and help shape Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. Compensation agreements, environmental management, and community relations programs rest on what I call a logic of equivalence that makes the environmental consequences of mining activity commensurate with the mining companies' mitigation plans. For example, legal codes enable engineers to measure, compare, and reconcile the costs and benefits of a project. However, the law is neither fixed nor uncontestable, and companies must respond to increased public scrutiny and the growing demands of communities, governments, and international actors. In Chile, campaigns against mining focused on the presence of glaciers at the mine site and the project's possible effects on water availability. By introducing new moral dimensions to debates over corporate responsibility, these campaigns challenged established strategies of commensuration and existing ethical guideposts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]