Foreign students that come for a short stay usually need a cultural adaptation process due mainly to lacks in language skills and cultural differences. These facts involve that some alternative methods have to be developed in order to optimize the short time of the stay to achieve efficiently the knowledge objectives. This work showed an active learning experience applied at the ESAB-UPC at the spring semester of 2008. We can point that the use of active learning in research work that cover different disciplines could be a useful strategy for integrating students from other countries.