Abstract:

Master's students face the writing and oral examination of their Final Master's Project (TFM) with anxiety, low levels of self-efficacy and without the necessary competencies for its correct execution. The aim of our study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a teaching innovation project in reducing anxiety and increasing students' self-efficacy in order to achieve a better performance of the students in the writing and oral defense of their TFM. Five theoretical-practical seminars were designed to cover the key competences to be acquired by the students. These competences relate to the writing of academic-scientific texts and the acquisition of communication skills. Through a pre-post experimental procedure, we have evaluated students’ self-efficacy and their level of anxiety towards their TFM. In addition, students’ performance has been examined through a simulation of TFM and its subsequent oral defense. The project has been supported by the Moodle platform, where materials were available to the students. Our results show statistically significant differences in students’ self-efficacy, level of anxiety and the performance before and after participating in the program. Significantly better scores were obtained in their TFM when compared with the students of the previous course which did not take part in this project. Thus, participants are more effective in the writing and oral examination of their TFM at the end of the program, show lower levels of anxiety and higher performance in completing the task.

Acknowledgement:
This work has been supported by University of Zaragoza: PIIDUZ_18_097, PIIDUZ_18_123 and PIIDUZ_18_157

Keywords:

Self-efficacy, anxiety, Master thesis, academic performance, writing skills, oral skills.