Abstract:

In recent years, a worrying increase in the level of demotivation among university students has been detected, which negatively affects their academic performance and increases the dropout rate. On many occasions, this demotivation is due to a lack of knowledge of the professional opportunities offered by each university degree. In this sense, many students ignore the practical utility of the knowledge and skills acquired in the different subjects of their degree that are useful for the development of the different professional functions that they will have to face in the future. For these reasons, it is interesting to implement didactic strategies that allow the approach and interaction of students with professionals in their field, so that they can translate the working reality to the classroom. Moreover, if these professionals are former students of their degree, the experience will be more effective from the pedagogical and motivating point of view. Accordingly, this work describes a teaching-learning experience organized as a series of conferences which was carried out with students of the degree in Food Science and Technology at the Rey Juan Carlos University. This experience was set as a mandatory and evaluable activity in different interrelated subjects of the degree: Food Analysis Techniques (2nd course), Food Chemistry (2nd course) and Analytical Control of Contaminants in Food (4th course). In each subject, a conference related to the subject matter was delivered by an invited former student who currently worked in that professional field. The conferences had a first theoretical part in which the former students explained their experience and professional career, as well as their functions within their company and how they are related to the knowledge and skills acquired in the different subjects of the degree. Likewise, they also explained the strategies that their companies are carrying out to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the 2030 Agenda. Afterwards, they performed practical workshops with the students addressing the sensory analysis of different products developed in their companies. Each conference lasted two hours and addressed the production and quality control of olive oil, meat products and mushrooms in the subjects of Food Analysis Techniques, Food Chemistry and Analytical Control of Contaminants in Food, respectively. Some weeks later after these conferences, the teachers carried out an evaluable activity in the classroom involving some questions about the conferences, as well as the data processing and interpretation of the results obtained in the product tastings performed during the conferences. Overall, the experience was very positive, and it was successfully evaluated by the students. The utility and interest of the olive oil, meat products and mushrooms conferences were scored by the students with a 4.6, 4.3 and 4.9 (out of 5), respectively. Additionally, they also highly appreciated that the conferences were given by former students. Moreover, this experience has allowed the students to understand the relationship between the knowledge acquired at the university during their degree with the real tasks required in their future field of work. Finally, it has also enabled to improve the level of motivation of students towards their degree, offering them a clearer vision of the current interest and importance of their degree in society.

Keywords:

Educational motivation, Former students, Food Science and Technology, Innovation, Professional experience, Teaching-learning experience.