Environmental technological projects in the computer engineering program

Given the importance to understand the sustainability and environment concepts and how technology can help solving environmental issues, we propose a course and methodology where computer engineering students learn new concepts, discuss problems and solutions, and design technological solutions to minimize the problems of those areas. This paper presents the experience with the design and developing of environmental technological projects in the Society and Environment (SE) course of the computer engineering undergraduate program at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS) in Brazil. The SE course comprises the theory and discussion of environment and sustainability topics and project proposals and practical developing related to the theoretical topics. The approach has been applied since 2012 in classes with 30-40 students divided into teams of four students for each project. According to the students evaluation, the course content and methodology have helped them to understand the problems and recognize technological solutions for important themes nowadays. In 2013, one of the SE projects has been awarded the best environmental technological product for improving traffic mobility in cities.