Abstract:

Nowadays, the adaptation to new environment established by the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has become a real and urgent obligation for all the subjects and professors of the European University System.

Facing this important challenge, the Group of Educational Innovation in Learning Tools in Business Management (http://www.ub.es/gidea/), from the University of Barcelona, has the solid purpose of designing and implementing new innovative teaching resources and materials, based on the applications of ICTs, both as a support for traditional classroom-based teaching and autonomous learning.

Therefore, since several years the authors of this paper have been working on the research of educational innovation. As a result, they have already prepared some teaching resources in digital or multimedia applications. The elaboration and initial implementation of these resources have been presented in the last International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (2008). It was a communication paper entitled “New tools for autonomous learning in business management”.

Basically, we refer to two fundamental teaching tools: 1) business cases in Web Quest format and 2) tutor-supervised exercises. The aim of those teaching resources in digital or multimedia applications is:

1. Creating teaching materials for virtual training through the application of new technologies, and to facilitate blended learning.
2. Bringing real business situations into the classroom by using multimedia tools that simulate decision-making situations in a range of business settings.
3. Developing and testing a set of new tools so as to be fully prepared for the new setting of the EHEA.

To improve student learning, the resources need to meet the goals of:
1. Enhancing student training.
2. Enhancing student academic performance.

At the present time, teaching resources are in the implementation phase. By the moment, the process has been successful. Student’s feedback and our preliminary evaluation are very satisfactory. In any case, we are now preparing quantitative results to show this satisfaction.

Therefore, the purpose of this communication is to present the results obtained by the assessment of both professor and students that have used these new teaching resources during 08-09 course. Furthermore, we show results of the student valuation obtained through a satisfaction survey. This survey includes the value of different competences, such as:

- Capacity to solve business problems and make business decisions.
- Capacity to analyze and understand complex environments.
- Capacity to organize and plan.
- Capacity to work as a member of a team.
- Ability to seek and analyze information derived from different sources.

Keywords:

autonomous learning, multimedia, ict, business management.