Abstract:

This paper draws and builds upon a teaching-learning experience framed into an specific subject of Comunicación y Medios Socioculturales: Enseñanza y Aprendizaje. It is part of Primary Education Degree which is scheduled to take place throughout the academic year 16/17.

Several teaching methods have been implemented in the Centro Universitario Cardenal Cisneros. It has a dual purpose: on the one hand to adapt teaching education degree to the requirements of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), on the other to give knowledge to our students about methodologies in order to apply them in their professional development. One of this teaching-learning methods is a Problem-Based Learning (PBL).

The PBL is a teaching strategy focused on performance the student skills in any problem resolution. The lecturer proposes an issue to the student group, and they must find out solutions to solve it, through researching and data analysis about topics faced in the problem. (Barrows, 1986; Barrett 2005 & Mossuto, 2009).

The proposed situation is fully customized for this student group. For designing the problem, it has taken into account the subject content and the competences to achieve by students. For planning this methodology, keep in mind the organizational structure of educational institution. There are three different levels of planning and organization, being all of them linked: educational institution, teaching material and own contents.

For PBL planning, process takes into account the phases indicated by Marieta, Andrew & Leon (2015):
1. Select targets: After checking the verification report (regarding the specific degree), all the competences for this subject were well identified, being selected the most important. The objectives were defined afterward fixing the competences.
2. Planning problem situation: The subject contents were revised first, just to know which contents could be developed by the students, themselves. Competences, aims and matters were considered when the problem was designed. Besides, it took into account the characteristics established by Henríquez, Pérez, Domínguez, Almeida & Zumbado (2015)
3. Guiding activity rules and teamwork: In this phase, minimum norms were settled for the student group, including roles for teacher and student (Antequera, 2012), and minimum criteria for work organization were set.
4. Set schedule: Tasks and timing were planned, being implemented through PBL methodology. Besides, all the teamwork meetings with lecturer were scheduled into the class hours.
5. Organize Tutorial meetings: It was scheduled a time-table for tutorial meetings, focused to help, manage and address the teamwork doubts. It was selected online web tools for all the communications between students and lecturers.

After implementation of PBL’s designing is expected to achieve the benefits associated both with obtaining selected targets and the development of planned skills. It was noteworthy the importance of acquiring the skills of teamwork, autonomy at work and motivation, since all is essential for teachers' professional performance.

In conclusion, there is a big difference between designing a traditional lecture in relation to this methodology. After the designing process, it has been able to corroborate the existence of numerous factors at different levels to consider the PBL’s strategy. This has meant that lecturers and university have to work harder in the organization and flexibility of subjects to develop the PBL.

Keywords:

PBL, Design, Planning, Skills, Education Degree.