Abstract:

Integration of Spanish universities in the European Higher Education Area has meant a conceptual and methodological change for teaching and learning, and the conditions under which they take place. This change has brought with it a teaching model that places students at the centre of the entire educational process, thus requiring a redefinition of teacher and student roles. In traditional education and training, the teacher directs the teaching, asks the questions, and marks the rhythm of the class. This new student-centred learning model, however, demands a different role from teachers. In their new role, the emphasis must be on the students’ own intellectual processes and on collaborative learning. The teacher’s new role focuses fundamentally on stimulating the group, organising activities, motivating and creating a pleasant climate for learning, and being an educational facilitator, providing experiences for self-learning and knowledge building.

In this scenario, new teaching strategies must meet this challenge by allowing students, with the tools the teacher provides, to resolve the problems they encounter when engaging with the contents of their studies. Teaching strategies influence the quality of educational activities, and teaching staff need a wide repertoire of teaching methods to reach their students. The range of activities available to teachers is very broad, thus forcing exhaustive consideration of the most appropriate activities for a given teaching sequence. The intended objective is, of course, more important than the activity itself.

In this context, we employ a new business methodology, Business Process Management, to pursue a two fold objective: to teach students to use Business Process Management software with a view to harnessing its practical applications in managing business processes, adding value to the subjects in which it is taught; and, to apply a new functionality of this software that helps students develop their own self-learning process.