Artículo presentado por Oscar Restrepo en el congreso de ingeniería de minas en Turín - Italia -2017

1. Creative teaching and learning in mining education
Enrique Posada R.
Hatch Indisa. S.A. Medellin, Colombia
Oscar Jaime Restrepo-Baena
School of Mines. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Medellin.
ojrestre@unal.edu.co
ABSTRACT
Always, as a professor of Mining Engineering, I have believed in the great potential that man
has to develop all his creative potential and that the most appropriate means for this is the
incessant search for knowledge through teaching. I believe that knowledge is a search for
unity between the individual and objects through human intelligence.
1. GENERAL APPROACH
I believe in some principles that give reason to my position towards the nature and the contact
between it and the intelligence, which I share with my students, among them are:
• Subtlety and silence: creating spaces for silence gives opportunities to the intelligence
to manifest.
• Contact with nature: all scientific knowledge seeks to interpret nature.
• Establishment of routines and cycles: in all sphere of knowledge there are cycles that
are a reflection of natural cycles.
• Understanding of beauty and harmony: they enrich the silences and allow to give
place to the creation.
• Abandonment of dogmatism and selfishness: knowledge is one and total, because then
focus on an individual or a group of them?
• Use of all available resources: why despise some resources available to the individual
who wants to know? Along with logical mental techniques (analysis, logical
reasoning, deduction, study, reading, etc.) are intuition, play, simulation, experiment,
pause, consultation with experts, music, poetry , Imagination, graphics, contemplation
of nature, group work, falling in love with objects, making synthetic phrases, theater,
practice, etc.
It could define learning as the set of actions that lead to the discovery of pure knowledge. To
teach and to learn is to delve into the vestiges. Vestiges are signs of something that exists, but
that is hidden. It is then to bring to light those signs and to clarify the relationships between
hidden objects and ourselves. The learning work must follow a continuous and systematic
search and must be enriched by actions such as:
• To give way to ideas and innovative and creative aspects.
• Facilitate harmonious relationships and group work.
• Create spaces for the testing of new ideas and procedures.
• Create breaks in the middle of the activity.
• Put in writing and verbalize the fundamental aspects that are resulting from daily
© 2017 GEAM - Associazione Georisorse e Ambiente, Torino ISBN 978-88-6378-004-8
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2. experience.
• Share experiences with other people.
• Assume the role of expert in the subject in which one works.
• Know the totality of the work through people and trades, users and suppliers of one's
own trade.
• Optimize the personal, energy, environmental and economic relationships that are
associated with the job that one performs.
• Structuring generalized theories and visions about the work that is performed.
• To idealize the goods and products that are manipulated in the work and to try to know
them every day more.
2. THE GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS AND THE GREAT CHALLENGES
Project engineering has to do with the development of an idea until it becomes something
real, useful, applicable and attractive. Engineering has stood out as a field of work that
facilitates the processes that lead to successful projects. There is much to be proud of in our
field of work. We have magnificent beings in our profession, those men who discovered the
secrets of the movement and developed machines, machines that freed man from the chains of
gross and repetitive work. Beings who discovered that heat could be transformed into
movement, inventing engines, turbines, and mastering power cycles. People who discovered
electricity and filled us with lights at night and mobile power at hand and home comforts. We
have electronics magicians, who have developed immense power circuits, able to control and
to think until limits never imagined.
We are rich in masters of transformations, who turned alchemy into powerful chemistry,
capable of creating materials for all uses. Other exemplary beings have developed the roads,
the bridges, the cities and the ports to wonderful points; others have developed methods and
systems to simplify complexity and make it available to all people. Others have facilitated
access to hidden resources in the most remote corners of the earth.
They are all engineers, people of wit, people who have the genius of the practical talent that
facilitates the life of man. We are part of a group of women and men who welcome problems,
considering that they are service opportunities. We well know that everything has its dark side
and that the wonders of science, which supports the engineering and the exploits of
technology, his daughter, have also led to alignment, consumerism, materialism, exhaustion of
Resources, ecological problems, excessive impacts on land, a hasty life that seems to leave
few spaces for spirituality and humanism. But that has never been our intention and we are
aware of our task of harmonizing what we do, of finding a balance, of being integral and
careful. This is a challenge we do not reject and we know that it requires an interdisciplinary
work with all human professions and trades.
3. THE VALUES THAT POSSIBLE THE PROJECT ENGINEERING TO BE DONE
It is important to have the capacity to look at ourselves in order to do things well and to
extrapolate our ideas in two planes: in the personal plane and in the plane of our country. It is
up to us, as project engineers, to generate technological added value. To add value, it is
important to be aware of the technological gaps that exist in our environment and to ensure
that we have strengths in these aspects. The issue of technology is important because
ultimately it will generate prosperity, employment, more decent working conditions, greater
efficiencies and more rational use of resources, more opportunities, prestige, self-esteem and
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3. greater social justice. For all these things we are working.
The development of the technology has to do with the following aspects:
• Assessment. Consists of being aware of the importance of technological processes, of
the need to develop them based on well-conceived projects, of the need to comply
with all stages of engineering in a project, respect for knowledge and methodology.
• Negotiation. It consists in knowing how to buy and sell technology, in knowing how to
look for opportunities based on knowledge and interest, in knowing how to finance
projects.
• Assimilation. It consists of knowing how to train, teach, learn, to organize data and
information, to do things methodically, taking good advantage of opportunities and
making the best use of resources, work with quality, schedules and budgets and fulfill
them, have contacts and advice, in working with databases.
• Transfer. It consists of ensuring that technology flows, attending fairs, congresses and
forums, reading and writing, researching, consulting and giving advice, actively
participating in working groups, comparisons and frames of reference, having
Contacts with customers and suppliers, in selling and buying.
• Efficient, responsible and sustainable use. It consists in ensuring that there are no
negative effects on the use of technology, generating wealth, employment, added
value, sustainability and long-term profitability.
• Generation of new technology. It consists in ensuring change, improvement, research,
patents, new developments, the development of ideas and their protection, creativity
and joy at work.
• Self-knowledge involves examining those aspects in ourselves and in our companies.
From them, a commitment to excellence in the country's technological development
should emerge.
4. TOWARDS A BETTER WORLD THROUGH EXCELLENT PROJECT
ENGINEERING
Personal ideas and the culture of society shape human behavior and provide the basis for
excellence or mediocrity of project engineering. It is important to have good ideas to create a
better world. Ideas such as those indicated in the list of values just reviewed.
As good project engineers, we like to work with checklists, so that nothing is forgotten, to
plan. Following Chip Heath, professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford University
School of Management, we can propose six basic traits to get ideas moving forward:
• Simplicity. Messages are easily remembered if they are short and deep.
• Element of surprise. Something that sounds like simple common sense will not have
permanence. The message should have surprising elements that break common sense.
Such messages generate interest and curiosity.
• Concretion. The concrete images leave impressions much more sensorial and felt than
the language and the abstract ideas.
• Credibility. The ability of the message to be accepted must be examined. The people
who receive it are the highest criterion of credibility and the question must be
examined: How do people feel the idea that is proposed?
• Take into account the emotions. By including examples of cases involving people in
the message, motivation and empathy are achieved. This makes it easier for ideas to
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4. feel, which is not achieved effectively with abstractions, to support the message with
stories. We all tell stories.
• Why? Mentally rehearsing a situation helps us manage it better, when we actually face
that situation. The stories work as mental flight simulators and prepare us to respond
more quickly and effectively.
In this work authors propose submit the good and creative ideas that we wish to expose to the
six criteria indicated and we skip them with some care, with the certainty that we will
contribute to create a better world with our precious ideas.
5. THE GENERATION OF HOLISTIC PROJECT ENGINEERING, CAREFUL WITH
MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT.
People are building reality as engineers generate projects. Engineers commit ourselves to
projects when we acquire a creative vision of their future and we decide to commit ourselves
to it. This applies not only in the fields of action related to work or study, but also to our life,
as individuals and persons, as citizens, as community beings, as inhabitants of the universe.
The power of a vision is that we dare to summon the higher energies that we have in our
interior, based on imagination, creativity, intuition, the capacity that we have to devote our
attention to a subject and in our capacity. To fall in love with an idea.
If our vision is holistic the engineering of projects that we develop will be careful with the
man and with the earth. We propose the following elements to give an integral sense to our
work.
• Good communications and mental clarity. This allows us to avoid confusion and focus
on the objectives and fully understand the implications of the work we do.
• Establish needs and knowledge of the capabilities and resources required. This allows
us to tell the truth and be honest in the commitments we dare to assume.
• Energy, environmental, human and social considerations in everything we do.
• Establishment of specifications, lists of activities and work plans. This allows us to
meet the concerns and needs of the people involved and to meet on time and within
the allocated resources.
• Dedication to work and discipline. This allows us to manage the time well and
perform all the tasks.
• Study and research mentality. This allows us to advance in the knowledge, to be up to
date in the technology and to offer excellent options in our projects.
• Quality assurance and continuous improvement. This gives us peace of mind and a
sense of honesty with what we do.
• Teamwork and good coordination. This allows us to enjoy friendship, sharing,
learning from others and teaching.
• Elegance in the presentation and aesthetics in the execution. This gives us prestige,
satisfaction and more work.
6. HARVEST SEEDS OF THE FUTURE
Project engineers must be committed to processes of excellence. These processes are planting
processes. We work as sowers, with outstretched hands, full of confidence, full of seeds and
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5. rising life, roaming the fields, watering the seeds of the valuable future that will come. There
is nothing in the mind of a sower to discourage him, he only sows with enthusiasm, with
confidence in the soil and in the seed, convinced of the enormous creative potentiality of the
nature of things, which are born, grow and reproduce.
He feels part of the eternal cycles that keep hope alive. We are sowers who contribute to the
seeds of our studies, our attention, our presence, our ability to design, draw, manufacture, sell,
manage and manage collectively a better world, a world of more knowledge, higher quality,
better communication, more security, more harmony, better products and services.
7. CONCLUSION
Each project, each team, every assembly, every study, every job, every contact with the
clients, every conversation, every concern, every message, every simple or complex task,
leaves its mark, sprouting and transforming us and creating a better world. For that we are,
with that certainty we continue in the search of a future that is worth. We are able to form with
our colleagues a great creative, fearless, mutually supportive community that vibrates as a
group.
As a creative community, each one brings their abilities and their powers to the group, with
the assurance that the whole is greater and more coherent and powerful than the sum of the
parts. Based on the individual contributions we can do things well, as a group and create
projects designed for a better world.
The decision is a fundamental basis in the learning, understanding like decision the anchorage
that the investigator has established between its essential objects and its practical objects.
When making decisions the process of analysis goes into the background and is taken to
action. The decision unleashes the investigative events. As long as one stays on the plane of
doubt, analysis, study, thought, action does not begin. Research is a continuous and cyclical
process, of trial and error, of search and discovery, of success and not success. But it is, above
all, a continuous decision making and road selection and hopefully short cuts.
Among the fundamental actions of teaching and learning are taking note, drawing, using all
the senses (hearing, sight, touch, smell, taste), setting concepts, making diagrams, using
symbols, Speak with the help of examples and analogies, repeat the idea and turn it around.
All of them are techniques to establish the research practice.
A great help to make teaching and learning effective is to write, lecture, and summarize; it
gives mental clarity and allows to communicate to others, this is a practical way to enrich the
lives of others. The report is an efficient way to open up the wealth of the world that is not
manifest to other people, it is also the culmination of this process.
REFERENCES
• Restrepo-Baena O. J. Mis ideas y creencias sobre la investigación. Universidad
Nacional de Colombia, Sede Medellín, 2003.
• Posada R., Enrique. La enseñanza y el aprendizaje de la creatividad. Intergraf,
Medellin, Colombia, 2003.
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6. • Posada R., Enrique. La contemplación creativa. Intergraf, Medellin, Colombia, 2006.
• Posada R., Enrique. En busca del conocimeinto creativo. Edición digital. 2010
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