Abstract:

In the field of engineering, teaching is generally based on the explanation of theoretical concepts applied to exercises, which can be tackled by using different methodologies, depending on the type of skill that students are expected to acquire.

One of the most widely used teaching methodologies when conducting practical sessions, focused on exercise resolution, is group work. During that sessions, students are divided into small groups with the intention of establishing a productive discussion on the activity by means of a collaborative work. This helps students obtain a consensus solution to the proposed activity, which also contributes to their own active and enhanced learning.

This type of activities usually implies a real challenge for lecturers when it is designed to be conducted on-line, or through a blended approach. Some tools have been developed to achieve this objective easily, but their real impact in the students have not been proved yet. To compare the effectiveness of virtual work group activities, some activities were designed and performed simultaneously of on-line and face-to-face work groups. The design of the on-line groups has been devised by using the set of tools available in the Google Suite. After the activities, students were asked about the learning methodology (skills acquisition and satisfaction) and some numerical results were taken as feedback. As a conclusion, some shortcomings were detected in the virtual work groups showing potential improvement points for the on-line tools.

Keywords:

On-line teaching, work groups, innovation, Google Suite.