ELECTRICAL INSTALLATIONS ANALYSIS AND RISK-ATTENUATION IN LOW-INCOME HABITATIONS INSPIRED BY PROJECT-BASED LEARNING

• Main Authors: Márcio Mendonça, Lucas Botoni de Souza, Rodrigo Henrique Cunha Palácios, Ulisses Pereira Rosa Borges, José Augusto Fabri
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio Grande do Norte 2018-12-01
• Series: Holos
• Subjects: electrical engineering; project-based learning; social responsibility
• Online Access: http://www2.ifrn.edu.br/ojs/index.php/HOLOS/article/view/7835

The concept of social responsibility in engineering is the obligation that its professionals have to evaluate the impact of their work on public welfare. Although being a content presented in classrooms, the students in our university do not have contact with real-world situations of risk of electrical shock and fires caused by improperly electrical installations. To attenuate this deficit we created the undergraduate extension project "Analysis and Correction of Electrical Installations in Low-Income Habitations in the city of Cornélio Procópio" in the Federal University of Technology–Paraná. In this work, we focus on electrical installations safety conditions inspection and corrective actions in low-income habitations in Cornélio Procópio, Brazil. Our inspiration is the Project-Based Learning (PBL), in which we insert students in real-world environments to point out and analyze electrical installations problems. In our project, a group of students and a supervising professor inspect the situations of risk according to a decision tree and make repairs in the electrical installations in the visited habitations. We created a socioeconomic form answered by each family visited and photos in order to obtain data for archiving. At the end, the students answered a qualitative form that verified the impact of the project in their learning and practical skills, and their awareness of social responsibility as engineers. We verified that the repairs improved the life quality of the residents. Finally, we address quantitative future work.