Following up the call for research projects launched by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) after the first pandemic event in Portugal, and bearing in mind the positive results obtained, during the summer of 2021, a new call was launched with a shorter duration. During one month just before starting the university academic year, undergraduate students could join a research team in a research lab, and by applying a “learning by doing” approach, students experienced a research atmosphere and got involved with the main activities being developed by the research group. For engineering students, this is an opportunity to bring theory to practice, get experience, and ingress into research teamwork. This paper presents and discusses the main achievements of this initiative, in particular, the research experience of three undergraduate students and their host research teams, from the Algoritmi center, from the School of Engineering of the University of Minho, Portugal. The students’ opinions on the developed projects were quite satisfactory and they recognized that joining this type of scholarship opens horizons, promotes an inquiring spirit, teaches research strategies and, above all, students can see their knowledge applied to engineering research and on the advancement of science.
Learning engineering involves observing and understanding how systems or processes work, but also knowing the cause and effect relationships present. During the course, students learn that the process of engineering investigation requires conducting experiments to validate theories or hypotheses about what makes the system work. Each experimental run is a test. It is through active experimentation, the controlled intervention of a process that modifies the inputs and characteristics of the process, that it is possible to learn the effect of a set of different factors on a response variable. Based on experimental data collected to model thermal comfort in hospital waiting rooms, this paper aims to contribute to the knowledge of this phenomenon through the selection of the most appropriate statistical techniques to analyze the data. For engineering students this is an opportunity to bring theory to practice.
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