Abstract:

One of the most important changes that teachers and students must face as a consequence of the adaptation to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is the reduction in presential teaching with respect to current teaching systems. This reduction implies an important change in learning and teaching, thus it means an adjustment in both students and teachers. In this sense, one of the needs to adapt teaching to this new system is the development of strategies aimed at the autonomous learning. We are a group of 11 teachers of different subjects related to “life sciences”, concretely to the areas of Biochemistry, Botany and Genetics, all belonging to the “Univesitat Politècnica de Valencia” (UPV). Our purpose is to develop a set of learning objects useful for autonomous learning targeted to students of different subjects in the field of “life sciences”. A total of 26 subjects belonging to four bachelor’s degrees and two master’s degrees are included in the project. The set comprises four different types of objects: teaching papers, polimedias (recordings including both, the slides containing the information presented and the teacher explaining the contents), teaching videos and learning modules. Up to date, fifty-three objects have been developed, and the collection will be increased with 26 more items by the end of this academic year. As an average, each of the learning objects designed resulted to be useful for five of the subjects included in the project. In any case, all the objects can be used at least in one subject, besides the one for which it was initially developed. One of the learning videos available is usable for 13 different subjects. Regarding the subjects, all of them plan to use between three and 46 of the objects. As an average, the number of learning materials used per subject is more than 15. As a result of previous works carried out by the group, an analysis of the uses of different types of objects in relation with the learning style is available. The learning style of the students who are provided with the different objects is determined at the beginning of the teaching period. This information allows the teachers to orientate students about the type of objects to use either to take advantage of their preferred learning style, or to improve the less developed abilities. As an example, visual students will prefer learning videos instead of learning papers, although the latter will help them to potentiate their verbal abilities.

Keywords:

Autonomous learning, learning object, learning style, life sciences.