Abstract:

The Final Project (FP) is one of the curricular novelties promoted by Spanish universities as a result of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Its application has generated a broad range of teaching proposals that are being managed with varying degrees of success at each university, depending on the coincidence of certain factors (ratios, studies, selection criteria, etc.).

The FP sets before students the challenge of applying a series of vocational competencies and involves a great burden of autonomous and individual work; therefore, the role of the tutor is a decisive element for the good development of this project, contributing in turn to the academic success of students. Within the framework of the project REDICE 14-966 “Design, implementation and assessment of sustainable feedforward proposals” which six Catalan universities participated in, the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) carried out a study that aimed to systematise the feedback offered by tutors, in order to ensure the viability of the support they perform.

The project aims to provide an accompanying process based on group tutoring, whereby the exchange of experiences between students and collective construction of learning are encouraged. As a novelty, it provides the following features: a timeline of tasks that make students manage their time better and periodic meetings that facilitate support and the exchange of resources, strategies and materials between peers. These meetings help to diminish the feeling of isolation, increase student perseverance, and favour formative-type feedback.

In particular, a work plan was designed to guide the whole process of drawing up the FP, consisting of 5 instalments spread throughout the second semester of the course. Through each of these instalments, students went about building the different sections of the FP: (choice and justification of the theme, initial documentary analysis, design of the process and instruments, initial draft of the theoretical framework, and analysis of results), until the final production thereof was reached. In each of these instalments, tutors provided feedback to students using diverse strategies: written, oral, and face-to-face as a group. Based on the feedback received and in order to ensure feedforward, students went about introducing these changes into a new document (Change Table).

A total of 9 lecturers in the Faculty of Education and 58 students in the Degrees in Early Childhood Teacher Training and Primary School Teacher Training took part in the experience. In order to assess the efficiency of the experience, the final marks obtained by students were collected, along with their opinions (through a structured questionnaire complemented with open questions), and a group discussion was carried out between participating lecturers.

The results show that students obtained high marks in their FP, while they valued the accompanying process received very positively. In this sense, it is worth noting the scores awarded to both the feedback provided by tutors and the group tutorials. Finally, tutoring staff were satisfied with the experience and valued the process in terms of efficiency, sustainability and quality.

Keywords:

High Education, Final Project, feedback, feedforward.