METHODOLOGICAL INNOVATION IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT “CONTROL SYSTEMS” COURSE * Doris Sáez and ** Rosa Uribe * Electrical Engineering Department, Universidad de Chile, Av. Tupper 2007, Santiago, Chile. Phone: 56-2-9784207, Fax: 56-2-6720162, Email: dsaez@ing.uchile.cl (corresponding author) ** Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Universidad de Chile. Beaucheff 850, Santiago, Chile. Phone: 56-2-9784746 Email: rouribe@ing.uchile.cl ABSTRACT Pedagogic methods' implementation in the “Control Systems” course of the Engineering program are presented and stressed on Learning Object’s Design, cooperative work, case study and site visits. The proposal promotes the teachers' reflection leading them to a role change within the classroom, a change in the design of curricular activities that goes from an exposition-centered teacher to a creative learning facilitator. In addition, students realize about the change and experience and express a high level of satisfaction. This contributes to increase students' attendance and participation as well as better grades. Keywords: Learning activities, cooperative work, case study. I. INTRODUCTION The “Control of Systems” Course is a core course according to Universidad de Chile's Civil Electrical Engineering curriculum. It is programmed for 4 th year students who have accomplished common program courses, due to the fact that it is a basic course for their development as electrical engineers. Our interest in pedagogic methodologies for this course arise from the information provided by teaching assessment tests taken by students, which show a low satisfaction level with the course contents and commonly used teaching strategies. According to that evidence, we took the decision of using this course to test new strategies to attain learning outcomes by a change in teaching style. Our framework to build up this proposal is a centered “educational process”; within a practical paradigm. According to it, students do not merely guide their learning processes by structured rules (techniques) but by using reasoning skills (Kemmis, 1993). The reasoning is that, not only as a mean-goal instrumental process. It implies that the resulting curricular construct puts teachers on a stage of active decision making and responsibility during the teaching process. Teachers become a main character (far from the technician's classic image) as much as they realize that education is an ethical and practical labor supporting social integration, i.e. a social dimension related to context surrounding this process.