Abstract:

Higher education in Spain has recently started the effective conversion of studies and methodologies in the framework of the European Space for Higher Education (ESHE). Despite the challenges of this change, it is necessary to improve and optimize education and learning methodologies. In the last years, efforts have been conducted to organize higher education according to competences, using active methods to achieve an effective learning. For this reason, an interdisciplinary group of innovation and quality in education of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) was created under the name EICE-GRIPAU. This group is composed of educators from different areas of study, including agricultural engineering, forestry, architecture, fine arts and telecommunications. In the framework of this group it was identified that students in higher education tend to fail in developing an authentic and effective learning. It is also usual that they do not reflect on the way they are learning. This may contribute to a lack of motivation towards the learning process. We therefore concluded that more efforts could be conducted by educators, particularly in developing active learning methodologies. Making use of the multidisciplinary character of our group, our objective was to establish a common strategy to be applied under different circumstances in higher education. On the one hand we tried to promote an effective and satisfactory learning of students; on the other hand, our intention was to develop a common methodology to be applied in different areas of knowledge.
The main characteristics of this methodology and the main findings in the first year of use are explained here. In each subject we proposed an activity to be completed during the course. The activity was selected according to the characteristics of each subject, and the options used were either writing a scientific review article, developing a project, a case study, or an experimental work. Under this methodology, students were asked to use general and specific skills to solve the suggested activities. In all cases, a lecturer’s main role was to enable the students to be aware of the way they learn.
The following control points were established:
1. Presentation of the activity and screening.
2. Activity assignment to students.
3. Revision of the work, at least one time during the semester.
4. Revision after the final delivery of works by students.
5. Submission, evaluation and feedbacks to students.
Obtaining information from students was established as a critical point and therefore own-developed surveys were used to know the prior knowledge of students on general and specific skills, as well as to evaluate the student’s perception of our methodology.
As a result, we identified in our surveys a lack of development of general skills which obstructed the development of our methodology. This means that more coordination is necessary in the UPV so that students acquire these competences effectively. Once these gaps were rectified in our subjects, the performance of students was mostly satisfactory, according to student’s surveys and the evaluation results. The best activities of each subject during the year 2010-2011 will be made available for other students in the institutional website of the UPV.

Keywords:

General skills, multidisciplinar learning, collaborative learning, coordination, formative assessment.