Abstract:

Countries need to boost their R+D+I activities, the developed countries to maintain their global competitiveness, while less developed ones to improve their sustainability and productivity. Then, universities must train professionals capable of research and innovation and with the practical and critical skills necessary to face real-world challenges. In this context, it is essential to equip students with these skills so that they can contribute to the development of their society. This article describes strategies that have been found to be effective for teaching research at the university.

A quasi-experimental research with a quantitative approach was carried out, working with two groups of students enrolled in the Research Methods subject in the 2023-B semester. The control group consisted of 34 students. With the experimental group, made up of 35 students, a didactic intervention was carried out that applied a combination of cooperative, problem-based and project-based learning. Base teams of 5 students were formed to propose and develop a research project. At the same time, during the development of the subject, we worked on a research project at the level of the entire group, a project that served as an example for teamwork. For the cooperative activities, different ICT tools were used: resources and activities from the virtual classroom in Moodle and tools from the Google suite: Meet, Jamboard, Sites and shared documents.

Various methodological strategies were used to guide the research process. These included the creation of a problem tree and an objective tree to clearly state the problem and research objectives. The PICO framework was applied to structure the research question and a matrix was developed to facilitate the search for relevant evidence in the scientific literature. This matrix made it possible to identify metadata and crucial information to critically evaluate the information and summarize key findings.

Several cases were analyzed to determine the appropriate methodology for a research project. Previously, examples of research methods that can be used in engineering were presented and different techniques for data collection were explained, emphasizing the survey technique.

The results of the study indicate that the experimental group demonstrated superior performance compared to the control group, both in terms of grades obtained and the quality of the research projects carried out. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to determine the normality of the data. To compare the scores obtained by each group, the t test was used, while, while the Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the quality of the research projects.

It is concluded that, when starting a research project, it is essential to establish clear objectives and define specific problems and that the choice of methodology depends on the nature of the research problem, the objectives of the study and the available resources. This helps students focus on specific areas of study and formulate meaningful research questions. By defining problems precisely, students can direct their efforts toward finding innovative and effective solutions.

Keywords:

Research Project, Research Competencies, Generic Competencies, Cooperative work, engineering students.