A MULTIMEDIA TOOL FOR SUPPORT TO ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Recently, Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) has designed, developed and set up a new teaching platform called Polimedia which is included in a greater project named “Net Teaching Plan” which includes the following teaching supports: Digital Learning Objects (DLOs), Digital Learning Modules (DLMs) and Publication of free access content in the OpenCourseWare (OCW) web site. They are defined as individual teaching concepts characterized by small duration (in the 5-15 min range) that can be accessed by students, teachers and/or all internet users as support for teaching purposes, tutorship tasks or simply to reinforce some concepts discussed in the class. These objects can be accessed by students, teachers and/or all internet users depending on the restrictions established by the authors, following the respective URL. Many of the Polimedia learning objects are based on two elements: a power point presentation and a teacher explanation. Both elements are recorded in an individual way and after recording, they are processed together into a video file to offer a learning object characterized by complete synchronization between the power point presentation and the teacher explanation. This learning object allows some levels of interactivity with the students since it is possible to record different questions; the student can pause the video file and try to answer. We recommend some Polimedia objects to the students one week before the concept is discussed in the class so the student can work with the concept and he has an active role in the teaching –learning process. We also use these Polimedia objects for on-line tutorship tasks so students can formulate different questions via e-mail after viewing and working the Polimedia object. The overall results of the use of this new multimedia platform are really interesting and very useful due to the active role of the student in the teaching-learning process.