Abstract:

The incorporation of European universities to the EHEA has made these share a framework in which to develop together. This action is part of a greater process called globalization resulting in an interconnected world. These trends set by the technological, economic and industrial development forces that universities play a new role. Whatever previous study programs to the incorporation of the EHEA studies, all European universities have faced countless challenges that today are still being solved. Among the challenges is that students acquire the skills of teamwork and practical knowledge of the English language as they are essential for graduates of universities in the EU.

Teamwork is especially important to properly meet global market trends in which knowledge generation is increasingly a group rather than an individual task. This should be encouraged and learned from the early stages of personal learning. The courses should promote teamwork, designing explicit teaching activities for the group since they have many positive aspects in the process of teaching and learning.

Regarding the competence of the English language, it is a cross subject in the new curriculum set by the EHEA. In fact, for example, the University of Alicante (UA) in Spain marks a competence in a foreign language as a cross core competence of the UA that has been implemented in all the under graduate studies. Competence in the foreign language has become on a de facto the English language since it is widely used worldwide and is the leading language of the international discourse. It is also one of the official languages of the EU and essential language of all community aspects.

In this paper, the main objective is to show an experience of specific learning methodologies for high academic performance (HPC) groups in the field of computer architecture. The HPC groups were created at the universities of the Valencia region in order to strengthen the potential of the most outstanding students from the start of their university studies offering part of teaching in English, besides a series of benefits for their formation. In this work, we have developed teaching materials in English regarding the teaching of courses in the HPC groups related to the computer architecture. Specifically, we show the work done for the Computer Architecture course in the Computer Engineering degree. The course is taught in English, Spanish and Valencian. We have developed new materials for practices that allow active participation and teamwork. Each of the proposed materials is designed within the methodological framework implemented in the course, related to the achievement of objectives and competencies.

Keywords:

Design of educational materials, skills acquisition, English, teamwork, teaching computers, new technologies, computer architecture.