Abstract:

Recent studies show that the first year of university is an insurmountable barrier for many students. Different universities are proposing various strategies to address this issue. At UPC (Polytechnic University of Catalonia), teaching innovation projects have been promoted for years with the aim of placing students at the center and making them owners of their own learning process. At the School of Industrial, Aerospace and Audiovisual Engineering of Terrassa (ESEIAAT), part of the UPC, the first-year dropout rates of its various degree programs are analyzed, as in other schools, with some programs exceeding 30%.

For this reason, the school has sought to focus its efforts on changing these trends. This phenomenon has many different variables that influence it, but one of them is insufficient prior preparation in earlier stages and a lack of connection between the concepts taught in the first year and students’ personal interests. Since these subjects are more theoretical, they entail initial difficulties, demotivation, and low academic performance in those early courses.

To address this situation, three years ago a project was launched with the aim of improving the academic performance of first-year students at ESEIAAT (10 degree programs with an intake of 700 students). This project is designed to support students in the transition from high school to university studies, reinforcing their foundational knowledge and study strategies. The project is structured in three stages: a first phase prior to the start of the academic year, a second phase of support during the first semester, and a third phase for applying the newly acquired knowledge, carried out at the end of the semester.

Focusing on the first phase, which consists of a self-help tool, the goal is to provide students with a resource that allows them to assess whether they have an adequate level to take the subject or, alternatively, whether they need to reinforce concepts during the summer in order to begin the course at a higher level. To this end, they are offered questionnaires with high school content necessary for the different first-year subjects. At the same time, websites with teaching materials for each degree program and subject have been made available to students, offering organized support materials to facilitate understanding and review of key concepts, as well as the completion of tests through a questionnaire.

The analysis of this first phase over the three-year sample shows a progressive increase in participation and in the number of test attempts compared to previous years. The subjects that present the greatest difficulty (Algebra and Chemistry) have also been identified, as well as a correlation between the grades obtained in the questionnaires and the average admission score of each degree program. It is noteworthy that students who repeated the tests systematically improved their results, which are indicators of review and self-assessment.

Keywords:

Education, autonomous learning, Gaps.