Abstract:

Which competencies do students expect to achieve by attending University? How deep is the gap between School and University concerning skills and competencies provided and requested? Are school programs and usual methodologies able to prepare them properly to enter Higher Education studies? Which can be the role of Informal learning into Formal education to reduce this gap? Answering these questions firstly means focusing both the main competencies students should have acquired and the learning paths they have to follow for improving and developing them. According to international agencies like UNESCO, EU, and OECD, and from our standpoint, students need basic skills like: Media and Information Literacy skills, not only as ICT competencies and coding, but as the ability to understand media languages and creatively to reuse media contents; Cognitive skills, as an opportunity to rework knowledge in a transmedial and multidisciplinary way; Soft skills, as a chance to cooperate, to encourage resilience and self-management attitudes. On international indicators basis a questionnaire was designed to test student trends and needs about different learning aspects and dimensions. Since 2017 this survey has been addressed to students attending “Mediology” at Art, History, Theater and Spectacle Department by La Sapienza University of Rome. At the moment more than 1000 participants have responded, allowing an analysis of the results of a sufficiently large sample. From the first examination of data and results, it is possible to identify the skills students generally consider essential among those that the University has listed as useful. It shows a widespread technological demand and psychosocial skills request that should be faced in order to transform the methods of teaching at school and university increasingly: for example, by fostering project and collaborative activities as well as by supporting the Third Mission and Cultural Heritage preservation. Besides, an issue arises: how teachers may improve their competencies in the sectors considered as crucial by students? May a learning agency or inner organization be an adequate learning infrastructure to their training? Is it necessary to offer other professional development forms? Or to imagine new teacher figures?

Keywords:

Survey, higher education, learner perspective.