Abstract:

Spanish universities, in their move towards European convergence, are facing many changes in order to facilitate the free movement of students, academics and professionals throughout Europe. New forms of communication and organization of society have demanded the clarification and redefinition of the physical, psycho-pedagogical and technological aspects of learning, so as to increase effective working time, the variety and appropriacy of learning strategies and skills, and the intrinsic motivation of students.
The Learning Support Programme has been established in the "Learning Commons" of the University of Cadiz library with the aim of training students in the strategic use of learning procedures to enable them to "learn to learn", i.e. to develop cognitive skills with which to access content, not to directly learn content.
The programme offers a series of workshops on instrumental and interpersonal strategies to train users in the use and interpretation of information in a more competent and independent way. The workshops are structured in two levels and include a self-assessment test that guides the activities undertaken, as well as an opinion questionnaire regarding users’ satisfaction with the programme.
In this paper we present the results of the first semester of the 2010/2011 Learning Support Programme. It ran from October 13 to December 15 2010 and was offered to students on the Puerto Real, Cadiz and Jerez campuses. A total of 13 workshops were run, of which 6 were divided into two levels, resulting in a total of 45 sessions. Of the 605 students who registered for the workshops, 395 attended. We screened 301 and collected 362 workshop assessment questionnaires which have allowed us to evaluate significant aspects of the project.

Keywords:

Learning commons, competences, skills, Higher Education.