Integrated curriculum based on projects: Opportunities and constraints a case study in systems engineering

The Universidad Nacional is making significant efforts to improve the professional performance of graduates according to the needs of the society and the industry. In particular, the School of Informatics has been exploring the opportunities to implement, through the use of a pedagogy oriented to problems and projects, a curricular integration between diverse areas of knowledge in the curriculum. From this perspective, an initial exploratory study was carried out, with the aim of integrating the areas of programming, databases and systems engineering. The findings show several limitations, such as mismatches between the course contents, lack of faculty commitment to collaborative work and student resistance. They also show the need of establishing strategies to create, from the early years of the curriculum, the necessary conditions to promote a positive attitude towards curricular integration processes and therefore overcome, at least partially, the identified limitations.