Academics of the Faculty of Engineering are certified on CLIL methodology for teaching innovation

In the Council Room of the Faculty of Engineering (FING), academics who took the online modules of the "Teacher Training Program for Teaching in English" were awarded diplomas of completion with the aim of supporting faculty teachers in the delivery of teaching-learning tools in English.

This initiative is the result of an agreement signed between the College of Continuing Education of the University of Dalhousie and the Universidad de Santiago de Chile, and is focused on offering specialized training to academics from the faculty on the development and delivery of courses in English language.

To achieve this goal, the Vice-Deanery for Teaching and Academic Affairs, together with academic expert from Dalhousie University, developed an active teaching-learning methodology by using English language as a means of instruction.

The teacher training process consisted of three stages: the first was held in early 2018 and included eight participants, the second was held between July and August 2019 with more participants than the before, reaching 12 teachers, and finally the third exceeded the previous call with a total of 18 attendees.

Thus, Dr. Diego Vasco (Department of Mechanical Engineering), Dr. René Garrido (Department of Geographical Engineering), Dr. Cristina Villamar (Department of Civil Engineering), Dr. Iván Derpich (Department of Industrial Engineering), Dr. Felipe Castro (Department of Metallurgical Engineering), Dr. Mario Letelier (Department of Mechanical Engineering), Dr. José Luis Salazar (Department of Chemical Engineering), Dr. Miguel Maldonado (Department of Metallurgical Engineering), Dr Fernando Corvalán (Department of Geographical Engineering), Dra. Astrid Oddershede (Department of Industrial Engineering), Dr. Ronald Mac-Ginty (Department of Industrial Engineering), Eugenio Rivera Mancilla, Soraya Abarca (Coordinator of English at FING) and Cristóbal Guajardo (Assistant professor at the faculty) were certified in Content and Language Integrated Learning-CLIL.

In this regard, the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering states "certainly this is a very important activity, because we are moving forward to achieve another big goal, which is the internationalization of the Faculty. All this implies a process of continuous improvement. Now, we need to keep going and invite more academics to join the project, so more international students can take English courses of our faculty".

Regarding his experience in the CLIL methodology study, Dr. René Garrido affirms that "one of the most important things from the perspective of the internationalization of the curriculum is achieving a world-class education. For this, the active learning exercise in class is very relevant and interesting, and even more when we use CLIL. In our case as academics, the three stages were very intensive and deep. We lived the process gradually, that meas we first understand, we study, we question about it and finally we apply it on our classes. This brings a change of perspective and a big challenge, which hopefully we can deal without any problem.

This certification represents the efforts of the FING and all Academic Departments to contribute to the training of teaching skills in the use of active teaching methodologies and to enhance an international curriculum for students of all specialties.

Written by: Catalina Aguila

Translated by: Javiera Díaz