Abstract:

The following study was performed during the course Fundamentos Químicos para la Ciencia y Tecnología de Alimentos (Foundations of Chemistry for Science and Food Technology), a first year course of the Grado en Ciencia y Tecnología de Alimentos (Degree in Food Science and Technology), at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV).
Our students come from a variety of different studies, where basic Chemistry does not always appear as a compulsory subject. As a consequence of this, only a part of them have some basic chemistry background, whereas others don’t have the fundamental knowledge to fully understand our lessons. The second group of students became aware of their own situation when experiencing strong difficulties in problem solving during our classes.
Because this heterogeneous group of students, the teacher prepared some written teaching resources to assist those students who needed additional help. These resources were produced in the form of Objetos de Aprendizaje (learning objects), as short and non-contextualized documents. They were put up in the learning platform of UPV, named PoliformaT, so that the students could easily have access to them.
By using these tools, the students with an initially poor Chemistry background could self-regulate their learning and, with an important effort, reach the Chemistry command of their classmates. Our students were requested to fill in a questionnaire where they were asked about their background, the way in which they had used the written resources, and how useful these were in their view. From these questionnaires, we gathered important information about how our students regulate their own learning.