Abstract:

Despite the fact that most lecturers make a great effort trying to explain all the steps that must be followed in the lab in order to reach the aim of a determined practical task, it is true that students do not always manage to understand the main points and why they must perform them in a particular way. However, thanks to new technologies in e-learning it is relatively easy to give the students the chance to see the explanation of a practical task as many times as they require by providing videos with a simulation of what they are going to do or have done in the lab. These videos, along with the guidelines for the practical task, are very useful to students when preparing their final report and aid them in achieving the required outcomes for that specific assignment.

In this article, we present our experience on how knowledge is acquired in the practical sessions of the subject “Fundamentals of Food Industry Engineering” (second year), which are supported by videos uploaded to the PoliformaT educational platform of UPV (Universitat Politècnica de València). This was a compulsory requirement to obtain the Agriculture Engineering Degree in the academic year 2012-2013.

This experience was evaluated by comparing the marks that students received for the reports they completed in the academic year 12-13 with those completed in the previous academic year (11-12), in which no videos were uploaded. The students’ answers were very good, and most of them had largely achieved the learning outcomes with higher marks than in the previous course.

Keywords:

Video, e-learning, practical tasks, PoliformaT.