Abstract:

The ITA Group, belonging to the Department of Hydraulic Engineering and Environment at Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), offers a coordinated curriculum of online courses and postgraduate degrees, including the Master's in Efficient Urban Water Management. This program has been completed seven times with more than 190 enrollments since its inception.

The final step to achieve this master’s degree is the submission of a Master's Dissertation after all the subjects are completed. This dissertation has a load of 6 ECTS compared to the total of 66 of the master's degree. So far, less than 62% of the students who have successfully completed all subjects have submitted their Master's Dissertation.

This study analyzes the reasons that lead to this limited success rate. Issues such as the support and follow-up of the tutor of the work, the mode of communication with the student or the complexity of the topic are considered.

In a second part of the study, the process of development and success rate of the Master's Dissertation carried out by the students of the online master's degree is compared with students of an official face-to-face master's degree in the same subject area, which has a success rate of 85%.

The aim of this work is to analyze statistically and qualitatively the possible causes of student dropout in this last phase, which represents less than 10% of the total course load of the master's degree, in order to improve the tutoring and evaluation process. For this purpose, the results and variables that affect the development of the Master's Dissertation of more than 100 students during six academic years are used. The analysis of the grades and success rate between the master's degree and the official master's degree, whose main difference is the online vs face to face teaching, will allow us to know if this is the only determining factor on the results in order to act accordingly.

Keywords:

Distance learning, Master dissertations, e-learning, post-graduate education.