Abstract:

With the rapid development of information technology, concepts and analysis methods of “Signals&Systems” are increasingly becoming the technical basis for electronics, information technology, communications, computer science, signal processing, automatic control, etc. It plays a crucial connecting role in the college engineering curriculum since it combines physical notions, mathematical concepts, programming, and engineering. Following the Bologna-based engineering curricula in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the core subject “Signals&Systems”, lectured in the third semester of the Telecommunications Engineering Integrated Program (Bachelor and Master) in the Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain) pursues general and specific competencies by presential lecturing and laboratory work. Up to date, transversal competencies were naturally acquired when performing professional-oriented activities in problem-solving classes.

Its wide coverage of technical fields and the load of new contents (time and frequency domain analysis, continuous/discrete-time signal analysis, etc.) require a continue and strong students effort from the very beginning of the course. Apart from the traditional theory lectures and the practical laboratory work, two novelties were introduced this course 2022/2023: students were encouraged to voluntary submit the laboratory memory, and voluntary performing professional-oriented activities. First tries to compensate the lack of teaching time by boosting student’s own-study time. Second boosts the student to participate in different professional-oriented activities of signal processing applications: non-destructive testing, subaquatic acoustics, sound filtering, economic data analysis and biomedical application. Both together conform a volunteer pedagogical program that chronologically accompanies the student along the course according to the curricula contents.

Participation results show that the students lost interest on volunteer activities along the course, although they rather to do the transversal competencies activities than the laboratory memory. Furthermore, it has been found a linear increase in the final theory mark between those who made all the raised activities compared to the overall mean value of the course. In other to further explore the underlying reasons which motivate students to (not) participate 17 undergraduate students were interviewed. Those who regularly participate agree with the goals of the different tasks, have applied the material to conceptual understand the subject and recognize having found out new fields of application of Telecommunication Engineering. Surprisingly, they also appreciate that the activities were voluntary (without computing for the final mark). They rather work without the evaluation pressure and having endless time. However, those who intermittently participate on the activities justify their behaviour due to the load of work and they would have preferred any kind of recompense for doing the activities.

The evaluation of this innovative practise has also shed light on some issues related to the subject which must be solve for the next year: better time management in the laboratory and a new topic order for the transversal activities.

Keywords:

Transversal Competences, Pedagogical accompaniment, Professional Guidance, Signal and Systems.