Abstract:

Computer Basics (CB) is a first-year subject included in all the different engineering degrees offered by the University of Oviedo. The contents of this subject range from the introduction to logic and information representation, to data bases design principles and an introduction to programming, but also include hardware overview, operating systems and utility software.

Initially, CB had a common content all along the different engineering degrees that represents one of the weakest points of this subject. On the one hand, the contents do not feel appealing for those students enrolled in engineering degrees not related to Computer Science. On the other hand, CB’s teaching staff (TS) includes more than 40 department members; the coordination of the subject is a challenge by itself. Over time, the University relaxed the content’s constraint, allowing to develop specific teaching guides for each degree, including changes in the content and in the schedule. Nevertheless, the perception of the TS is that something is needed to improve the efficiency of both students and teachers.

At this point the FINEXT initiative took place. FINEXT (Fundamentos de Informática NEXT actions) aims to foster the innovation in teaching in CB in order to improve the students’ performance and also the teaching experience. Also, FINEXT establishes an informal communication channel between TS members to help in sharing ideas, experiences and methods among them. The FINEXT’s ultimate goal is to create an open forum to discuss how to improve the teaching of the subject, or how to engage the students in the day-by-day basis work, and addressing the diversity of the subject among the different engineering degrees.

FINEXT was founded in the last term of 2018, while the teaching of the subject was being carried out in the different degrees. FINEXT was proposed and approved by the head of the department before being launch to the TS community. FINEXT 2019 was developed from December 2018 to January 2019. The methodology of FINEXT follows the ideas proposed in Well-Sorted to prepare meetings and includes four stages. The first stage is to ask each TS’s member to propose a problem or an idea they observe in CB; this problem could be related with the teaching issues, the student behaviour or any other fact they might have found worth discussing. The second stage is to ask the TS’s members to group all the answers as they think best. The third stage is to choose the best number of clusters and develop the final meeting’s documentation. Finally, the last stage is a workshop, in which the attendees could discuss the groups of answers and propose solutions and/or teaching innovation actions.

FINEXT 2019 engaged up to 12 TS’s members out of 44, including members from the three different University campuses. There were four groups of answers concerning “students’ motivation”, “students’ skills”, “students’ work” and “subject’s complexity”. Although the first three groups were somewhat related, each group was discussed individually; for each of them some solutions and ideas were proposed, including some new tools to use in the teaching, several proposals for enhancing the documentation and also ideas for teaching innovative projects proposals.

This contribution deals with the details of this FINEXT experience, including its birth, the problems that were proposed, the groups, and the documentation that was generated, as well as the results from the workshop.

Keywords:

Higher Education Area, The Bologna Declaration and ECTS Experiences, Research Methodologies.