INDIVIDUAL OR GROUP ACTIVITIES AND THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS ARE IMPORTANT IN PROBLEM - BASED LEARNING AND OTHERS ECTS METHODS

In order to determine how the use of ECTS methods affect in academic performance, the number of students who went to exam, the number of students who passed the exam and the average note has been compared in harmonized groups (academic years 2008 to 2010) and no harmonized groups (academic years 2001 to 2007) in Biochemistry, subject of the 3rd year in the degree of Chemistry of the Universitat Jaume I. In addition, it has been compared in harmonized groups how does the number of students affect (Group A: there were 56 pupils and in Group B: 25) and how affect the use of group activities (academic year 2008-2009) o individual activities (academic year 2009-2010). In no harmonized class the 56 % of pupils went to exam but only pass the 40 % and the average grade was 6.5. In harmonized class at the academic year 2008-2009 there were two groups (A and B) it was used continuous assessment model and the ECTS structure was the same for the two groups. However, although the percentage of students that participate in all proposed compulsory activities and the number of students in the first call was similar (75 %) , in Group A only passed 44% of the students with an average of 4.5 points, whereas in Group B passed 84% of student with an average of 7 points. This shows that even if the students think to be prepared, in big groups they don’t learn correctly the different proposed skills. Moreover, marks from the different partial activities show that big groups are not effective. In these ones, they don’t work together adequately and not all of them spend the same time in the task, not obtaining good results. The next year (2009-2010) there were two groups with approximately 25 pupils each group, the ECTS structure was the same like in the previous year, but the activities (exercises, written work) were mostly carried out individually and not in group. In this case the number of students in the first call were lightly higher than the previous year (90 %), the number of students which pass the exam were higher (>60%) with a similar average (7.5).
Globally we can observe that in harmonized courses the percentage of students which attend and pass the exam and the average is greater than in the not harmonized courses. However, the students evaluated worse to the teacher. It is possible that although the students learn more when using ECTS methodologies, they evaluated worse to the teacher possibly because the students have to work more during the course when ECTS methods are used.