Abstract:

Food Process Engineering is a subject from 6th semester of Agronomist Engineer from Universitat Politècnica de València. In this subject many problems must be solved in order the students to understand the materia. Traditionally, teaching was done by means of master class. Teacher explained theoretical concepts and solved practical exercises and the student did not participate actively in classes.
Teachers from this subject were not satisfied with the results. The number of students who repeated the subject was increasing. The mean mark was around 5.5/10 and the percentage of students who passed the subject was 73%. Teachers thought that the students did not follow the classes and at the end of the semester they had too many new concepts to learn.
For that reason, since course 2007/2008, teachers changed the teaching methodology. With the aim to encourage the students to follow the course regularly, they were grouped in working groups of 3-4 people. Each working group received 16 problems for solving along the semester. These problems were exams from previous courses. The problems had to be delivered at the end of a studied topic and they were returned to the groups corrected by the teacher. All the groups had to attend at least at 4 tutorial during the semester, one tutorial for each of the topics. From the 4 problems of each topic one had to be presented by a group to the rest of the students. The group which presents the problem were raffled.
During the four courses in which the methodology has been used, the results have improved. The mean mark for 2010/2011 was 6.9/10 and the percentage of students who passed the subject was 92%. These results have encouraged the teachers to continue using active methodologies in teaching.