Students entering engineering programs do not share the same academic background upon graduating from high school. Due to the diversity of curricula, some students have taken both Differential and Integral Calculus, while others have only studied Differential Calculus, and there are also cases where students from technical high schools have not taken any Calculus courses. To ensure that students have a comparable knowledge level and to promote better learning based on solid foundations, the implementation of basic mathematics knowledge workshops is proposed. Mathematics is one of the subjects with the highest failure rates in introductory courses, as reported by various countries [3]. These workshops aim to reduce failure rates and provide academic support to students. At the start of the course, students take two exams: one is a selfperception survey regarding their confidence in Mathematics, and the other is a diagnostic test (pretest). Based on the pretest results, students who score below the passing mark are invited to participate in the workshop. The workshops include sessions on algebra, trigonometry, and analytic geometry, with a focus on essential content to ensure comprehension of new material. The workshop format is designed as a hands-on session, where a brief explanation of about 20 minutes is provided at the beginning, and the remaining time is dedicated to individual or collaborative work in groups of three students. Out of a total of 327 students, 98 participated in the workshop. At the end of the workshop, a content verification test was administered. All students completed a postest at the end of the course. Statistical data from the initial diagnostic test (pretest), the final course exam (postest), and the workshop exam were analyzed. A comparison of results between workshop attendees and nonattendees is presented.

Critical thinking is an important skill that professionals of all disciplines must possess. In this work, a case study where a group of students undertook a sciences and technology course with the goal of developing critical thinking is presented. Particularly, whether the students developed skills after the course was assessed by using the standardized “Watson-Glaser” critical thinking test. When comparing the performances, it was found that the mean score increased by around 4 in a scale from 0 to 100. A Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was conducted to assess normality, followed by a Wilcoxon and a Multi-factor Analysis of Variance, to determine statistical significance. It was found that the scores did not follow a normal-behavior, and that results are statistically significant, based on critical p and F values. Therefore, it was concluded that the sciences and technology course helped students develop critical thinking skills.

Gamification is a process of adding game elements to change the learning method and improve the results. This educational innovation activity has the main objective of impacting Biotechnology and Chemical Engineering students' comprehension about biomolecules for the Fundamentals of structure and properties of biomolecules subject in the third semester of their careers by immerse them in a gamification-type activity where they carried out different biomolecule identification activities through 3D printed structures that they previously reviewed theoretically in class. This activity was conducted in the winter semester of 2021 and 2022, where 139 students were divided into the experimental and the control groups. The rally development consisted in four stages as it follows: the challenges design for each rally station where the selected ones were to put together the atoms sequence to form an amino acid, to identify the components of a cell membrane, to represent the movement of the ions in the sodium potassium pump, and to find a biomolecule in the campus with provided clues. Once the challenges were chosen, the material was made by 3D printing and then the competition rally took place and the winning team with the shortest finishing time was named in a ceremony. To evaluate the students' knowledge retention, an argumentative exam was applied and the participants' perception was estimated by a Google form. The learning activity had a significant impact on the performance of the course with a p-value of <0.01, and according to the evaluation, the students consider that this type of activity helps them to retain concepts and information.

There are ongoing efforts from universities to increase the participation of undergraduate students in research programs. However, few undergraduate students pursue a research program due to the lack of interest and unappealing project offerings. In addition, there are few programs in Latin American universities for undergraduate students to pursue research. This paper provides an overview of a semester research program created for undergraduate students in a Latin American university. The most critical aspect of conducting a research semester is finding students interested in research and keeping them motivated. There are several challenges to address for a semester research program; one is that students have to consider at least 40 hours of weekly work, and the other one is that the final deliverable is a conference paper. We provide the steps to track the students' progress in their research semester and the associated grading system. To know if the students are motivated through the research semester, we conducted the MUSIC®inventory model of motivation regarding the research semester and its usefulness. So far, our methodology has been implemented successfully with four students. The results suggest that this methodology maintains students' interest in research projects. Whilst the proposed model can be replicated easily, the motivation students' results might not be easy to generalize.