Educating Future Agricultural Engineers at the University of Burgos, Spain, through a Service-Learning Project on Rural Depopulation and Its Social Consequences

2026-04-22T20:11:23Zhttps://riubu.ubu.es/oai/request

oai:riubu.ubu.es:10259/80162023-11-16T01:05:29Zcom_10259_6171com_10259_5086com_10259_2604col_10259_6172

Educating Future Agricultural Engineers at the University of Burgos, Spain, through a Service-Learning Project on Rural Depopulation and Its Social Consequences Revilla Cuesta, Víctor Skaf Revenga, Marta Manso Villalaín, Juan Manuel San-José, José T. Ortega López, Vanesa Agricultural engineering Agri-food building Depopulation Qualitative analysis Reflection activity Rural environment Service-learning project Social service University teaching Word-cloud mixed analysis A Service-Learning Project (S-LP) is a teaching experience through which the concepts covered during an educational course can practically be applied to address a given social problem. It is therefore a useful teaching methodology to bring courses closer to the real world. An S-LP experience is reported in this paper that was conducted with students of agricultural engineering to address the problem of rural depopulation, through the design of agri-food buildings for industries, and economic activities that help to maintain a stable population. After the S-LP, a survey was administered to both students and teachers, to assess the success of this teaching experience. The responses of the students showed not only an awareness of the social problem that was addressed, but also a critical spirit that led them to seek the best possible answer, and a global vision of the issue. It helped them to reflect on all of its facets to arrive at a way of engaging with the social problem. Importantly, the students were able to reflect upon how engineers can also serve society through their technical knowledge. The teachers indicated that the S-LP motivated the students on the course, while enabling them to successfully learn the concepts, and to develop independent study skills searching for information. In general, an S-LP is an experience that the teachers in this study would recommend and that could be especially relevant for universities assuming a role as a social entity to heighten the visibility of social problems and needs. 2023-11-15 2023-11-15 2023-03 info:eu-repo/semantics/article http://hdl.handle.net/10259/8016 10.3390/educsci13030267 2227-7102 eng Education Sciences. 2023, V. 13, n. 3, 267 https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13030267 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 4.0 Internacional MDPI