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Our students belong to a highly digitised generation with easy and rapid access to information. They are dependent on technology and tend to become bored quickly. There is an ongoing debate regarding the need to reconsider our teaching methods in order to capture the attention of our students. This study surveyed both students and teachers on the subject of online teaching and its impact on university education. Additionally, it explored issues related to integrating interactive applications in education. These applications are considered essential tools in combating student boredom and disinterest. They also enable teachers to receive valuable feedback, which was highlighted as critically important by educators in the survey. In this context, we conducted a study within a chemical engineering program at a Spanish university. We examined the use of four different interactive applications (Kahoot!, Wooclap, Classflow, Moodle) and compared the results with those from previous years when only one of these applications was employed. This study aimed to determine how using multiple applications led to increased student participation, driven by avoiding monotony, resulting in improved academic performance. • Students and teachers prefer a face-to-face model due to more significant interaction. • The use of interactive applications helps to maintain attention and the feedback teacher/student. • The favourite application for students and teachers is Kahoot!. • The employ of several tools increases the student's participation and improves their academic marks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practice in experimental laboratories is a fundamental activity in the Degrees in Science and Engineering. FLUID-LABVIR platform is an attempt to innovate in the experience of students who must carry out laboratory practices, particularly in engineering and fluid mechanics subjects, by providing them with a tool (guide prepared as a website) adapted to the context of current media in a multi-platform web format (PC, mobile, tablet). This guide not only includes the theoretical foundations and the measurements which must be taken during the practice, but also includes images, animations, and explanatory videos of the handling of the practice made by teachers to support the theoretical content. It is also an additional tool to practice the handling of the experimental installation through an immersive simulator that reproduces the operation of the practice as faithfully as possible, including calibration errors of measuring equipment during the practice, saturation of indicator elements, etc. On this website, students have the possibility of downloading or accessing the practice simulator via the MyApps platform, so that they can work virtually with the demonstrative equipment, following the steps and taking the measurements that they would take in person in the laboratory. This simulator is accompanied by a short video tutorial showing how to use the simulator and how it would be operated to reproduce the handling and taking of measurements in the experimental practice. The virtual laboratory activity was implemented during the 2020/21 academic year, through three practices/simulators: Head Loss in Pipes (FM-HLP), Flow in Open Channel (FM-OC), and Wind Tunnel (FM-WT). The students considered the activity as a good complement to the practical learning before using it in the laboratory, indicating that the script seemed more attractive to them than the previous methodology based on written manuals of each practice in the laboratory. The theory and practice are also presented in more depth on the website. The students highlighted that, although it is always preferable to carry out the experimental practice in person, the immersive simulator seemed to them to be a good substitute, and the website was accessible and easy to use. The simulator reproduced the handling (stages, devices, etc.) of the experimental installation in a very acceptable way, and in some cases, they used the simulator to obtain additional data to prepare the final report of the practices. As a result of this work and this experience, the virtual laboratory activity will be offered as a complement to the traditional syllabus in the labs for subsequent academic years. • FLUID-LABVIR, an online platform as innovative way to teach experimental laboratories. • Webpage is based on audio-visual material and an immersive simulator of installation. • FLUID-LABVIR is open to all the students and educator community. • The students consider FLUID-LABVIR a good complement to the practical learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents the development of a novel methodology for the simulation of photochemical processes for water disinfection using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). A new approach was implemented to calculate and visualise the disinfection performance as the microorganisms move along the photoreactor. Hydrodynamics and microorganism's statistical trajectories were computed using the discrete phase model, which also provides the distribution of microbial residence times. The distribution of radiation in the reactor was calculated using the discrete ordinate method. The local values of incident radiation were integrated over each statistical trajectory path to get the accumulated dose received for each microbial particle. The coupling in situ of the cumulative radiation dose with the inactivation kinetics allows monitoring of the disinfection process concurrently with the particle tracking. This methodology introduces significant advantages over the traditional estimation of the microorganism inactivation sequentially after calculating the dose histograms estimated from the statistical trajectories. The developed tool enables evaluating the photoreactor efficiency in each reactor position, a useful capability for optimising and scaling up complex geometries. It also allows the easy, intuitive visualisation of microbial inactivation trajectories, improving the understanding of the influence of the reactor features on the disinfection process. Application of this computational approach to two different photoreactor geometries using a virus as a representative target microbe is presented. [Display omitted] • Multiphysics CFD simulation of microbial inactivation in photochemical reactors. • Residence time distribution calculated with the discrete phase model. • Cumulative radiation dose computed along the microbial trajectory. • In situ coupling of radiation calculation with the inactivation kinetics. • Application to virus inactivation in two different photoreactors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]