Abstract:

The course ”Prestressed and Reinforced Concrete” in the 4th year of Civil Engineering should include a program involving a general and minimum knowledge that allow students to compute and design reinforced concrete structures and simple prestressed concrete structures. As a consequence, theoretical basis and its application to practical problems are needed to solve classical problems in the field of the Civil Engineering. During the course, the basis of the theory and simple exercises are solve in class, however, to reach the goal of the course, the students have to work individually making exercises.
According to the professors’ experience of the course, it seems that more time is needed to explain the solution of the exercises. Another detected issue comes from the fact that many students did not work continuously during the year, but also they focused on the subject when the exams are close.
In order to fix these problems, during the academic year 06-07, an enhanced action was developed to improve the quality of teaching consistent of the proposal of problems to be discussed in seminar sessions. After the proposal, the students tried to solve the exercises with the guidance given in the seminar and put the questions in a group.
Seminars are distributed during the academic year with a frequency of one per three weeks. This action became really efficient, since the students knew the content of the class before attending it. The reduction of consuming time by students is highly appreciated by them and the results of the exams are clearly improved.
In this communication, a presentation of the methodology to develop these seminars is carried out. Results of this action are provided through the polls made among the students.

Keywords:

innovation, seminars, question, concrete.