Abstract:

The incorporation of competences into the curricula is key in the training of people belonging to a constantly changing society that continually reformulates its demands and aspires to professionalize high education. The purpose is to bring the university closer to laboral world (Mir Acebrón, 2008). This implies a different way of curricular organization, so that the study plans must include teaching-learning methods that facilitate the acquisition of skills and provide evaluation methods to verify their acquisition (de Miguel Díaz, 2006). Consequently, professors design contextualized, complex and focused on learning situations for students, to apply and solve problems as real as possible, and acquiring an active role in the process. In this context, professors can implement Project-Based Learning (PBL) (Chen & Yang, 2019). In particular, multidisciplinary projects provide professors and students with a teaching-learning tool that allows the development and evaluation of competences through the exploration, creation, and construction of solutions to real problems (Lafuente-Martínez, 2019).

In this context, it is common to carry out multidisciplinary projects as a team. Teamwork consists of organizing and obtaining results effectively to achieve common objectives, contributing to the personal and professional development of team members (Canós-Darós et al., 2019). In principle, we can assume that teamwork is motivating for students due to its different connotations: sharing the workload, communication, interaction, sociability, etc. We define motivation as a series of steps to follow to achieve a result (Canós-Darós et al., 2022). The process begins with the existence of a need, which generates a motive, which leads to a change in behavior, always in order to satisfy the unsatisfied need. If the result is positive, we can end the process here or feed it back, starting again, although with more experience. If the result is negative, we will have to analyze why a change in our behavior has not worked (surely a change in behavior will be needed).

In this work we analyze the impact of the use of PBL on the motivation and active learning of PBL students through the realization of a multidisciplinary project between two subjects of the degree in Management and Public Administration that is taught at the Faculty of Business Administration and Management in Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain). The involved courses are Human Resources Management and Labor and Social Security Law, 6 ECTS basic subjects in the third year. In particular, we analyze the results of the items corresponding to motivation and teamwork defined in the CECAPEU questionnaire (López et al., 2021). In this line, we verified the relationship between teamwork implemented in the multidisciplinary project by the students and motivation in the classroom, through some interviews.

Keywords:

Competences, Motivation, Multidisciplinary Project, PBL, Teamwork.