Abstract:

In many disciplines, such as economics, psychology or social sciences, debate is used in higher education as an active learning strategy for in-depth knowledge learning and to improve professional skills. However, published experience in the technical/engineering field is very limited. The effectiveness of this active learning method may be conditioned by both the academic level of the students and the topics covered.

This work describes the actions taken to introduce structured classroom debates as an active learning strategy for undergraduate and master’s students in Food Science and Technology. Topics of varying social interest and technical complexity were addressed, all related to the Sustainable Development Goals. Methodologically and temporally structured pre-debate, debate and post-debate activities were proposed. The activities included objective tests to assess the impact of the activity on the acquisition of fundamental knowledge, open-ended questions to determine the impact on the acquisition of professional skills, and opinion questionnaires to assess the students' interest and acceptance of the activity.

The results were positive in all cases. The effect of the activity on the acquisition of basic knowledge depended on the type of activity developed in class and the level of prior knowledge to the topic. Experience based on solving exam cases was more useful to those students who really had studied previously, but this was not the case when the subject was new for all students, because the best improvent was found in students with initial lower academic level. Participation and motivation were higher when topics of greater social interest were addressed. However, in all cases the students were satisfied and expressed their acceptance and interest in doing more similar activities.

Keywords:

Food science and technology education, professional skills, debate, active learning.