Abstract:

During the first year of the agricultural technical engineering studies the students often show a reduced interest in subjects related to certain knowledge areas such as applied physics, or in certain thematic blocs included in these subjects. Students usually attend the laboratory practical lessons because they are compulsory, although they loose courage to attend the theoretical and practical lessons. The result is a poor learning, which implies that a smaller number of students decide to take the subject final exam and obviously a lower success rate for these subjects.
This is the characteristic situation of the subject ‘Advanced physical basis in engineering’ for the degree of agricultural technical engineer from Miguel Hernández University (Spain). Specifically, students have trouble learning some of the objectives of thermodynamics section of this subject. In this work, the methodology of ‘directed study’ was applied to improve learning. The corresponding academic course has been 2009/10 and the time period employed was between March 4th and April 3rd 2009.
The results show that students improve the learning of the objectives included on the managed study and are more motivated to take the final examination, which can probably increase the success number of this subject.

Keywords:

applied physics, agricultural technical engineering, improve learning.