Abstract:

Adaptation to the European Higher Education Area has required the implementation of teaching-learning methodologies to involve students in their process of learning, but also methods for continuous assessment in order to verify the effective progress of their learning. These methods are of particular importance in the postgraduate studies, where students are more thoughtful and committed, with clear learning objectives and professional experienced, and who look for specialization through training for a better performance of their professional activities. Lecturers from two subjects of the Industrial Hygiene area of the Occupational Health and Safety Master in the “Universitat Politecnica de Valencia” decided to take advantage of this framework to carry out a joint experience of methodological innovation. In this experience, lecturers proposed to the students the development of a common project for both subjects, with a topic related to their professional activity which allows going deeper into the technical aspects related to the contents of each subject. In both subjects, assessment was performed using deliverables throughout the semester and a final delivery at the end. Deliverables were corrected and assessed by the lecturer of each subject and returned to the students for their modification and addition to the project. Periodical meetings between the lecturers of both subjects were also conducted to assess the degree of student progress in both subjects. The assessment of the effectiveness of this methodology was carried out through the results gathered by anonymous student survey at the end of the semester and also through data-shearing meetings of the lecturers involved. Results of the evaluation were satisfactory for students and lecturers so that innovation will continue in the next academic years. Improvements such as better coordination to avoid overlaps between deliverables of both subjects, revision of the deliverables contents to reduce workload of the lecturers, or reduction of deadlines to return corrections in order to provide a more frequent feedback to the students will be incorporated.

Keywords:

Teaching coordination, continuous assessment, postgraduate, teaching-learning.