Abstract:

Today the world is facing a great challenge that has a strong impact on the Mundial Educational System, the COVID-19 pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the learning process and required that all students have to learn through online platforms which implies a distance learning process between teachers and students. In order to minimize this impact of COVID-19 on the students’ learning, the educational system has been forced to change, and new pedagogical activities have emerged, everything was adjusted to the digital learning environment. Teachers during the year 2020 were forced to adapt their pedagogical activities as well as learn a new one to become attractive and motivating for students to actively participate in the distance learning process.

The objective of this article is to present an application of the Project-Based Learning (PBL) and understand the perception of students about the development of their transversal competencies acquired during this collaborative work. The project involved students from the second curricular year of a Higher Professional Training Course (HPTC) of Management Applied to the Development of Touristic Products (MADTP) at University of Aveiro, Portugal, during the fall/winter of 2020. Teachers shared the PBL methodology to join two disciplines for the same students: Animation, and Itineraries and Tourist Events and Tourism Quality Management. It was purposed as a practical activity that students should organize four webinars with different themes. The aim of this project was to explore how collaborative work within PBL methodology can motivate students and engage them in distance learning using several digital tools to support the learning process, team coordination, and interpersonal communication.

The methodology used was initiated with exploratory research as a case study. One questionnaire was applied to better understand the perception of students to their competencies developed with this project. Implementing this methodology, teachers have a deeper knowledge about the transversal competencies that can be developed under this particular context.

The study shows some evidence of the students’ perceptions about their competencies developed during a real-life learning context, such as communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, time management, collaboration, leadership, responsibility, self-direction, and work ethic. The results aggregate organizational and behavioural competencies.

Keywords:

Project-Based Learning, Distance Learning, Collaborative work, Event Management, Transversal Competencies, COVID-19.