Abstract:

An Educational Innovation Project is being carried out at the University of Malaga in two subjects concurrently. One is the 4th year subject "Structural Determination" of the degree in Chemistry, and the other is the 2nd year subject "Fundamentals of Environmental Engineering" of the degree in Environmental Science. In this paper we present a comparison of the academic results obtained by the two different student populations once the teaching innovation has been implemented. Furthermore, these results are also compared with the academic results obtained in each one of the two subjects over the last 5 years without the teaching innovation.

The number of students enrolled in the academic year 2011-12 was 33 in the subject Structural Determination and 73 in the subject Fundamentals of Environmental Engineering. The teaching innovations were mainly implemented using some of the tools available in the MOODLE platform, which is used by the University of Málaga to create learning communities online. These tools were used to encourage the autonomous learning of students using both individual and collaborative activities, and they basically were:

1) The Virtual Workshops for mathematical problem solving by the students that in brief consists of 4 stages: trying to solve, publication of the correct solution, peer review, and evaluation, and finally autoevaluation (Gómez-Lahoz et al., 2008).

2) The Doubts Forums in which the students ask the group about specific difficulties that could arise during the running of the virtual workshops.

3) Quizzes built from a questions and answers database generated by the students and related to selected topics. These questions are previously subject to acceptance, criticism or peer rejection through a specific forum for each topic, denominated quizzes forum. (Vereda-Alonso et al., 2009).

4) Wikis and the Group Forums in which students organized in several small groups should prepare and submit a report on any of the topics proposed by the teacher.

As it could be expected, the participation of the students in this learning methodology needs motivation. In this case, the incentive for the students consisted on the assignation to their participation in the aforementioned learning activities of a relative contribution of 25 % to the total marks of the subjects. The remaining 75% of the total mark is assigned to the exam that students take at the end of the term.

Acknowledgements:
The teaching team wants to acknowledge the comments and suggestions received from the Servicio de Innovación Educativa (SIE) and the technical assistance for start-up and maintenance of the platform from the Laboratorios Tecnológicos y Enseñanza Virtual (LTEV) of the University of Malaga. We also appreciate the financial support from the Dirección de Secretariado de Formación del PDI de la Universidad de Málaga through the PIE Project 10-050.

References:
C. Gomez-Lahoz, F. Garcia-Herruzo, A. García Rubio, JM. Rodriguez Maroto, and C. Vereda Alonso. "Learning chemical engineering with MOODLE workshops and other virtual tools to enhance continuous collaborative work: A practical experience.". ICERI 2008, Madrid (Spain). 2008

C. Vereda-Alonso, C. Gomez-Lahoz, F. Garcia-Herruzo, A. Garcia-Rubio and J. M. Rodriguez-Maroto. "Teaching under the “campus andaluz virtual” with the student as the active protagonist: Objectives and methodology." EDULEARN09, Barcelona (Spain). 2009

Keywords:

Workshops, moodle, serious game.