Abstract:

Active learning is not only an ambiguous term but an “umbrella” term that designates a wide variety of activities ranging from simple activities involving students in the learning process, like sharing and commenting notes and their own research, to complex initiatives deployed by teachers in the classroom to motivate student participation through games and other experiences, such as case-based reasoning, problem-based learning, project-based learning, etc.

However, active learning in the classroom is a burning topic because it helps, and also motivates, students to understand the theoretical concepts and all the technical expertise in their area of study (hard skills) of their study area and it also helps them acquire soft skills that business executives consider crucial in a job applicants. Examples of soft skills are collaborative skills, transmitting clear and structured ideas, facing new challenges applying acquired knowledge, creativity skills, commercial vision or development of business ideas, just to name a few.

Since specialised companies want to enroll motivated students in their projects at an early stage, they are happy to participate in cooperative learning experiences. Unfortunately, many teachers don't truly believe in the benefits of these activities and reject them. Paradoxically, most of them have not taken part in any active learning activity and get the wrong idea that those are things that don't do well in real life.

For years we have developed a cooperative learning experience using a platform that encourages students to form a community of developers in our university. This community is mainly composed of engineering students and it is also includes professional engineers of different companies and it is open to other teachers and people interested in the topic. We designed the platform for a community of computer science developers but the platform can be used in any engineering area: electrical, electronic, industrial, mechanics engineering, etc.

In this paper we present the results obtained from this 5-year-experience using the platform. Furthermore, we will propose a new project to continue the activity with an evolved and more practical view that interacts with nowadays education and professional networking patterns. In this paper we will describe the platform details, the face-to-face interaction and the individual accountability for each student in the platform. Finally we will present the skills gained by the students and the teacher’s and specialised companies’ impressions.

Keywords:

Student participation, community of developers, cooperative learning activities, soft skills.