Abstract:

The incorporation into the European Higher Education Area --EHRA has demanded the deployment of major changes in the teaching culture at the University academic institutions. The use of educational strategies based on the use of methodologies that encourage a student’s active role, the importance of "learning to learn" and the ability to work together as a core competence, are essential in the change. Thus, active learning has become a priority in the development of curricula and the centre of gravity of the process should move towards methodologies that help students to develop their professional skills, interpersonal relations, abilities for the resolution of conflicts, for the application of theory to practice, in their training for self-employment.
The students must learn to develop their own learning strategies combining the methodologies with the problems that arise in the development of their career, since higher education should prepare for a lifelong learning, whatever their field of activity. This change requires more attention on the acquisition of skills.
In this work, we describe our experience in the use, as teaching innovation, of a combination of different methodologies, on the same group of students over two consecutive semesters. Based on past experience, it has been implemented by means of the cooperative learning puzzle technique of Aronson, case studies and group dynamics.
In this course, it has been used a survey, the SEEQ (Students Evaluation of Educational Quality) by Marsh, which identifies more precisely the strengths and weaknesses of the method for improving the teaching of both subjects in future academic courses. Also, a questionnaire carried out by the lecturers on the development of generic skills, as well as a rubric for evaluating the competency of teamwork, was carried out.
The experience was very highly rated by both, students and lecturers. The main drawback has been the workload for the students and the lecturers, but from the point of view of the students, it has been offset by the academic results.

Keywords:

Collaborative methodologies, EHRA, Industrial Engineering.