An authentic and contextualized integration project related to the beer production process at the “Usine-École Siboire”

During the third semester of the bachelor's degree in chemical/biotechnology engineering, students have frequent assignments and exams that generate stress, anxiety, and interfere with the teachers’ educational objectives. Based on these observations, how could it possible to decrease the number of assessments to alleviate the students’ stress and ensure that they remain motivated throughout the semester and achieve in-depth learning. The proposed solution is to replace all the homework from the mathematics, thermodynamics, and transport phenomena classes by a joint authentic and contextualized integrative project related to the beer production process where the students benefit from an easy access to the “Usine-École” installations. In the 2023 fall semester, a pilot version was implemented. The teachers noticed that the students were comfortable in solving open problems that met their interests, and that their motivation and involvement was increased. An area to improve for the students concerned the analysis and interpretation of their results.