Abstract:

In this work, a pre-undergraduate course for first-year students of Bachelor’s Degrees is presented. It is designed to adapt a previous blended-learning program to a virtual environment and, to correct some deficiencies detected in the current pre-undergraduate formation.

The College of Engineering of Teruel (EUPT) of the University of Zaragoza started a blended pre-undergraduate course for first-year students in the summer of 2014, after detecting students’ lack of required previous knowledge. This problem is mainly due to the variety of training background that allows them to Higher Education access. This issue could foster the first-year students’ frustration and, early university drop-out[1]. The course provides learning materials for the students through the Moodle learning environment platform. The reference materials are available two months before the beginning of the course and they are completed with several face-to-face sessions where teachers summarize the main concepts. The course includes materials regarding subjects such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Electronic circuits, and Programming Fundamentals.

The project has pursued three aims:
The creation of teaching materials with actual learning value, and value-added accessibility. In the initial courses, the learning materials provided were mainly the ones used in classroom training adapted to the virtual environment. In this project, materials specifically designed for virtual teaching have been created with value-added accessibility. Hypermedia materials, where different media (text, image, video…) are used to present educational content, have well-known advantages, as an adaptation to different learning profiles or redundancy, which can be positive for meaningful learning creation. These features are only possible if the materials are designed accordingly to the aims pursued and the target learners[2]. Following the learning-by-doing paradigm, these materials include activities that enhance meaningful learning and serve as evaluation tools with feedback to the students. Intellectual property has been also considered.

Implementation of a coherent virtual learning pre-undergraduate program. So far, the different subjects of the pre-undergraduate course were completely independent. This work aims to create a learning program, not just a compilation of educational contents. Therefore, a uniform aesthetic appearance is pursued with the use of common templates and structure. The way the learning is evaluated is also common and the qualifications got by students are shown together into Moodle. At the same time, a degree of flexibility is kept, allowing students to study what they really need.

The definition of a quality protocol based on Moodle tools about information collection and evaluation. In order to implement a continuous improvement process, we have defined a quality criteria and their corresponding metrics. The reports tool integrated into Moodle eases the process of information collection.

References:
[1] Willans, Julie & Harreveld, Bobby & Danaher, Patrick. (2019). Enhancing higher education transitions through negotiated engagements of learning experiences: lessons from a pre-undergraduate preparatory program language education course. Queensland Journal of Educational Research 2003, vol. 19, no. 1.
[2] Cabero, J. and Gisbert, M. (dirs) (2002): Materiales formativos multimedia en la red. Guía práctica para su diseño, Sevilla, SAV University of Sevilla.

Keywords:

e-learning, pre-undergraduate course, multimedia learning.