INTRODUCTION

Active methodologies can be understood as teaching methods that actively involve students during the learning process. Through meaningful actions and activities, students reflect on what they are doing and what they are learning. Alternatively, such approaches can be mentioned in the literature as inductive teaching. These methods are similar because the student assumes greater responsibility and protagonism for their learning, which may be based on research and/or collaborative activities, involving discussion and problem-solving. The teacher is a facilitator of learning, not acting as a primary source of knowledge, evaluating, and observing his students’ progress, and providing the necessary assistance at specific times. As a result of student engagement, there is greater retention and understanding of the content covered, as well as greater attention and concentration on the proposed activities (^{Hernández-de-Menéndez et al.; 2019}; ^{Prince, 2004}; ^{Prince and Felder, 2006}).

Despite recent and modern, active methodologies were already highlighted by classic authors in Education at the beginning of the 20th century, such as John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky, in the context of school education for children and young people. The first emphasized the importance that the knowledge passed on in the classroom should always be introduced by real situations, which would generate students' interest in learning since education should be considered as a life process and not as a preparation process for a future life (^{Williams, 2017}). The second one indicated interactive activities such as productive discussions, constructive feedback, and collaboration with others, as fundamental for the construction of knowledge, with the teacher being the main promoter and motivator of this type of interaction (^{Kurt, 2020}). Both characteristics emphasized by these authors are fundamental pillars of active methodologies applied in current times.

Even with the different advantages and good results of using active methodologies, most teachers still prefer traditional methodologies, especially teachers in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) (^{Stains et al. 2018}). The main reasons given by teachers are the insufficient time to prepare classes with new methodologies, limited resources, lack of institutional support, difficulty in approaching content and making assessments using such approaches, students' resistance to participating in the proposed active activities, in assuming responsibility for their learning and being forced to carry out group activities (^{Deslauriers et al., 2019}; ^{Felder, 2010}; ^{Henderson et al., 2007}).

Despite these facts, universities and professors in their initiatives, have considered the different benefits of active methodologies and have invested in environments and situations conducive to their adoption in higher education curricula (^{Hernández-de-Menéndez et al.; 2019}). The need to train professionals with technical skills combined with problem-solving skills, present in the day-to-day activities of professions, encourages the use of these approaches with university students, in the most different areas. The development of skills and abilities valued by the labor market, such as critical thinking, analysis, problem-solving, leadership, teamwork, and the use of information and communication technologies, among others; are also attractive consequences of the use of active methodologies (^{Prince and Felder, 2006}).

The Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing actions, and the sudden deployment of remote learning have also accelerated the use of active approaches. In this context, professors were challenged to maintain attractive and quality teaching through computer screens, cell phones, and TVs. The use of methods of greater student engagement, together with technological tools, has a high potential for maintaining performance and learning, even in times when face-to-face meetings were not possible (Donitsa-Schimdt and Ramot, 2020; ^{Palmeira et al., 2020}; ^{Singhal et al., 2020}).

Considering this context, the general objective of this work is to verify the temporal evolution, in Brazil and the world, of the use of active methodologies in the context of higher education courses in Engineering, through a systematic mapping of the literature. Specifically, we seek to identify the main researchers involved in research in this area in recent years, and their geographic location, in addition to verifying the Brazilian presence in these researches. Based on a brief analysis of the titles, abstracts, and keywords of the listed works, the aim is to identify which active methodology is most used by professors of higher education courses in Engineering. Thus, the aim is to understand how such methodologies have entered the classrooms of these courses and how teachers and students have received this change in the teaching-learning process.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This work consists of a systematic mapping, which according to ^{Kitchenham and Charters (2007}), corresponds to a secondary study aimed at identifying and classifying a theme/content related to a research topic. Its results allow a broad investigation of the chosen theme, enabling the investigation of the main characteristics, conclusions, and gaps in the literature, as well as the suggestion of new studies and the use of new methods, approaches, and/or approaches. Performing systematic mapping requires the construction of a research protocol, consisting of seven basic steps (^{Petersen et al., 2008}; ^{Petersen et al., 2015}), illustrated in Figure 1.

For this work, such steps were defined as follows:

With the application of this protocol, data extraction was performed, resulting in a list of primary studies. The data in this list were summarized in graphs and tables, prepared using the following computational tools:

This data synthesis sought to find answers to the research questions established for this systematic mapping. Such responses include verifying the advancement of the presence of the theme of active methodologies in higher education courses in Engineering over the last few years; the identification of the main vehicles for disseminating such research and which are the main researchers involved and the identification of the active methodologies preferred by professors in the field of Engineering.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The application of the established research protocol found 433 original research papers, with 55 results obtained from Science Direct (SciDir) and 378 results obtained from Web of Science (WoS). We verified the existence of 17 repetitions, which were found in both search engines, but they were withdrawn and considered only once. Thus, the final number considered was 416 publications, which are indicated in Appendix A (title and year of publication).

The temporal distribution of publications is presented in Figure 2, considering the established search period, between 2005 and 2020. This figure differentiates the works found in each search engine, in addition to indicating the accumulated total of publications each year. The years with the highest total number of published works were 2019, with 73 publications (17.5% of the total), 69 from WoS and 4 from SciDir; and 2020, with 71 publications (17.1% of the total), 57 from WoS and 14 from SciDir.

It is possible to observe a significant increase in the number of works published from 2015. Until that year, the total number of published works was 153, which is equivalent to 36.8% of the publications found in this mapping. Between 2015 and 2020, 263 scientific articles were published on active methodologies in higher engineering courses, corresponding to 63.2% of the works mapped and 1.72 times the number of works identified between 2005 and 2015.

Such results are indicative of the growth of the presence of active methodologies in the classrooms of higher education courses in Engineering, with an acceleration of their uses and the reports present in the international scientific literature after 2015 and with peaks in the last two years of the period of survey considered (2019 and 2020). The repetition of this research protocol, in a later period, may be interesting to find out how the extension of the Covid-19 pandemic may have affected this growth, considering the context of social isolation and remote teaching.

The works mapped here were published in 124 different scientific journals. Figure 3 highlights the five journals with the highest number of publications in this mapping and the respective number of works published in these journals.

The journal that presented the largest number of papers was the International Journal of Engineering Education (IJEE / ISSN: 0949-149X) with 84 articles, which corresponds to 20.1% of the mapped publications. Then, with 34 papers (8.2% of the total), there is the European Journal of Engineering Education (EJEE / ISSN: 0304-3797). Both journals currently publish six editions per year and have in their scopes the dissemination of scientific research focused on the development of education focused on Engineering, on a global and continental level.

The journals IEEE Transactions on Education (IEEE ToE / ISSN: 0018-9359) and Computer Applications in Engineering Education (CAE / ISSN: 1061-3773) were, respectively, the third and fourth journals with more publications in this mapping. IEEE ToE is linked to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and seeks to carry out educational research linked to higher education courses in Electrical, Electronics, and Computer Engineering. This result highlights the presence of this area of Engineering among those that most disseminate their results of active methodologies in the scientific literature. The CAE journal, on the other hand, addresses studies on the use of computers, the Internet, tools, and software, in the context of Engineering education, which also highlights the initiatives of teachers to include new technologies, combined with active methodologies, in the context of student training.

Figure 4 shows the five authors most present in the analyzed studies. This survey considered both the position of the main author and co-author of the works. In the 416 works analyzed, 671 researchers were involved, which corresponds to an average of 1.61 researchers involved per work. Maura Borrego (University of Texas at Austin, USA) was the researcher with the largest number of papers, with 6 participations, 4 of which as first author. Shane Brown (Oregon State University, USA) was second, with 5 participations, 2 as lead author. Jeffrey Rhoads (University of Purdue, USA), Noboyuki Ogawa (Gifu National College of Technology, Japan), and José Manuel Lopez-Guede (Universidad del Pais Vasco, Spain) complete the list. An interesting fact common to such researchers is their initial training in Engineering and the carrying out of further studies, seeking to integrate active methodologies into the courses they belong to.

Figures 5a and 5b show the connection networks between the authors involved in the studies listed in this mapping, divided by search engine (Science Direct and Web of Science, respectively). A link indicates that an author has published at least one paper with another. It is not possible to present all 671 researchers involved in these figures of all existing connections. In this way, the most frequent connections are displayed in the figures.

It is interesting to note that the interaction between these authors is not intense, which indicates the need for more local studies, which report experiences at each university or each course in which they are involved. Even the authors with more publications, shown in Figure 3, have few collaborations. Maura Borrego and Noboyuk Ogawa have a single frequent collaboration, while José Manuel Lopez-Guede has three frequent connections, all of which are of the same nationality. Shane Brown and Jeffrey Rhoads do not appear in these networks, since their work was always carried out with different professionals, infrequent in the dissemination of results through articles.

When we look at the list of authors with the most works and the most frequent connection networks, it is possible to assess that there is a predominance of American and European authors, especially Spanish ones. This assessment can be confirmed in Figure 6, which shows the geographic location of the researchers involved in the work listed in this mapping. This evaluation was carried out only for works obtained by the Web of Science search engine, since the search results on this platform, in textual format, provided such information, while Science Direct did not.

Observing all the authors (Figure 6a), it is possible to assess the predominance of the point cloud over the United States and Europe. Colored circles with a larger diameter indicate the locations with the greatest presence of researchers. Madrid (Spain) with 59 repetitions; West Lafayette (United States) with 39 repetitions; and Barcelona (Spain) with 29 repetitions are the cities with more authors participating in the listed surveys.

The American and European predominance over the other continents is even more evident in Figure 6b, which restricts the locations that presented at least 10 repetitions. In this condition, it is noted the lack of points in Asia, Oceania, and Africa, in addition to a large reduction in the presence of works from South America. In this last region, the works carried out in Chile and Colombia stand out, which in terms of the same location, presented more papers than Brazil.

Figure 6c shows the location of the first authors. The European and American predominance remains evident, considering that these regions have a research network on the subject and investments in science already consolidated, making them the main international references (^{Reis et al., 2017}). The presence of researchers leading publications on all continents is an encouraging fact, in the sense that active methodologies are already widespread worldwide and that there is a concern on the part of Engineering professors to bring them to the classroom.

Figure 7 shows a clipping of the maps for the South American continent to highlight Brazil. When comparing the map of all authors (Figure 7a) and the map of first authors (Figure 7b), there is a lot of similarity, which indicates that Brazilian researchers, in different regions, led research related to active methodologies aimed at Engineering courses. Numerically speaking, 40 researchers participated in such works, and 17 of these have a Brazilian researcher as the first author. Four of the five Brazilian regions had at least one participation in works on active methodologies. Only the Midwest region did not have representatives. The highest concentration of articles was seen in the South and Southeast regions, with papers coming from both capitals and cities in the interior. Despite this optimistic approach, it is believed that Brazil can still evolve in carrying out research and implementing active methodologies in Engineering courses. It is important to point out that the protocol of this research only collected works published internationally and that many researchers may choose to disseminate their research nationally, through journals and events in the country, whose papers were not captured in this survey.

Finally, Figure 8 shows three-word clouds obtained from the texts of the titles (Figure 8a), abstracts (Figure 8b), and keywords (Figure 8c) of the papers. The assembly of these word clouds disregarded the terms “active learning”; “education” and “engineering”, which were used as research criteria in the present studies and would inevitably be present in high quantity in these word clouds. We tried to verify the terms with more repetitions and that could be indicative of the active methodologies reported by the authors in each study. Words with larger fonts are indicative of greater repetitions.

In the analysis of these results, we tried to group the words into categories to list indicative reasons for their repetition in the evaluated texts. The categories were:

The results regarding the preferred and most cited active methodologies in the texts coincide with those seen by other authors in previous bibliographic studies (^{Jesiek et al., 2011}; ^{Reis et al., 2017}; ^{Wankat et al., 2014}; ^{Xian and Madhavan, 2014}), which presented different search protocols, considering the searched terms, the search engines, and the analyzed search period. In this sense, Engineering professors have given preference to the use of methods that facilitate the integration between theory and practice, a common demand of students in these courses, who in traditional teaching, suffer from distance from the classroom of true professional reality.

The skills and abilities developed with these methodologies, also identified in the evaluated terms, are a direct result of the use of active teaching and contribute to the student's personal and professional development. In addition, they are in line with the new focus of university education, where not only dealing with technical content is important but engaging and promoting meaningful learning are also fundamental for the success of graduates (^{Ríos et al., 2010}; ^{Hernández-de- Menéndez et al.; 2019}).

CONCLUSÕES

The implementation of the proposed research protocol resulted in a list of 416 scientific publications, obtained from the Science Direct and Web of Science platforms. The analysis of this list allowed the verification of the temporal distribution of publications, which allowed observing a strong growth in the dissemination of scientific works linked to active methodologies in the context of higher education courses after 2015. In this period, 63.2% of the works mapped were published, with 2019 and 2020 together representing 34.6% of the total number of publications. It was also noted that 124 journals received the listed publications, with 20.1% of them published by the International Journal of Engineering Education (IJEE / ISSN: 0949-149X).

The mapping of researchers and their location indicated the predominance of research carried out by Americans and Europeans, with emphasis on Spanish researchers. Maura Borrego (University of Texas at Austin, USA), Shane Brown (Oregon State University, USA), Jeffrey Rhoads (University of Purdue, USA), Noboyuki Ogawa (Gifu National College of Technology, Japan), and José Manuel Lopez-Guede (Universidad del Pais Vasco, Spain) were the researchers who most participated in publications in the analyzed period. It was possible to observe research carried out on all continents, which indicates that professors of Engineering courses have been open to the use of active methodologies and that future perspectives can be interesting, in the sense of favoring learning in these courses. Brazil also participates in international research on the subject, with 40 researchers as authors and co-authors of these publications, from four of the five regions of the country. There is a predominance of researchers located in the South and Southeast of the country, being both in capitals and in the interior of the states.

From the evaluation of the terms present in the titles, abstracts, and keywords of the studies listed in this mapping, it was possible to observe that the most present active methodologies were the flipped classroom, problem-based learning, and project-based learning. Such methodologies are easily adaptable to the reality of the contents of Engineering courses and facilitate the integration between theory and practice, which can motivate teachers to seek its implementation, in a moment of transition between traditional teaching and active teaching.

As recommendations for future research, we believe that a short-term evaluation of the use of active methodologies in Engineering courses is important, as a way of identifying the effects of the pandemic and remote teaching on its implementation in the classroom. The identification of the growth of new methodologies, which surpass those identified in this work, can also be a result identified in this repetition. The inclusion of other platforms and other scientific works, not just articles, are also possible modifications in the methodology proposed here and that allow obtaining different insights about active teaching in Engineering. Finally, crossing the results obtained from Engineering courses with other undergraduate courses is a possibility to increase the set of methodologies that can be used with engineers. An analysis of the reality of each area of Engineering is also another interesting aspect of future research.