Abstract:

Last year, in 2008 - 2009, a Mentoring Project was developed in the E.U.I.T. Forestal in order to facilitate the integration process of our new students. This project implied social as much as academic integration, and was carried out by senior students under the supervision of professors. In first meetings, senior students detected a great disinformation about Forestry studies and professional jobs. On the other hand, these last years, professors have also been detecting our new students have an appreciable lack of interest on the subjects they attend, mainly those of greater scientific contents. In order to motivate them, professors also perceived that students were much more interested on companions` opinions rather than those expressed by their professors. In order to give answer to these two requirements a cycle of conferences was developed throughout the year. These sessions were included under the title “Cycle of Forest Projects” and the main object was to show forestry activity along students´ final projects. The innovation of this activity is the collaboration among students and those who had just finished. Professors asked these students to expose their projects in about fifteen minutes; They should insist on the worth of the first year subjects, maths, statistics, physics, chemistry…as essential tools for the elaboration of such projects. As it has been said, we were trying to motivate students on the decisive roll in many cases and the utility of first year subjects. The experience has been very satisfactory since the valuation of the students who attended was very positive.

Keywords:

european higher education area academic coordination, educational innovation.