IMPLEMENTATION OF A SERVICE LEARNING METHODOLOGY TO INCREASE MOTIVATION AND REDUCE SCHOOL DROPOUT IN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Service-learning (S-L) is defined as the process of learning by doing a community service to society. There are many examples in the bibliography that prove that the S-L promotes not only transversal competences of the curriculum but also values, skills and social attitudes that will be very useful for the professional and personal development of the students and future professionals. At the same time S-L improves the motivation of the students, developping their sense of self-reliance and self-esteem.

Following the S-L approach, in this work we wanted to implement activities to support secundary education, specifically by improving the motivation of young students and reducing the rate of school dropout. The School of Civil Engineering of Madrid (U.P.M.) has established agreements with high schools institutes in the Community of Madrid so university students present their Final Degree Project to highschool students in special shared sessions. The scope of the project has two simultaneous and complementary learning lines:
(a) university students will strengthen skills such as creativity, oral presentation, information management... and, at the same time, will increase their self-reliance as they have to adopt the role of educator in front of the high school students, and
(b) high school students will see, from university students with ages very close to theirs, the display of a civil engineering project, which will bolster their interest in engineering and technology and will contribute to a motivation increase in pursuing university education (reducing the rates of school dropouts).

In order to develop this project and achieve the desired goals, final degree projects of the Civil Engineering Curriculum (roads, dams, ports, bridges,…) were selected and presented by their student-authors in two high schools in Madrid. The main achieved objective was support for education, for both high school students and university students, through Learning-Service methodology. Secondary objetives were the promotion of civil engineering studies among high school students and the establishment of relationships between the School of Civil Engineering (U.P.M.) and secondary schools that may allow future collaborations.