IMPROVEMENT OF THE STUDENTS MOTIVATION AND PERFORMANCE DURING THE CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT TESTS IN INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING DEGREES

With the implementation of the European Higher Education System in the Graduate Industrial Engineering Degrees at Universitat Jaume I, final qualifications in all the subjects include a percentage of the qualifications obtained in several tests carried out by the students during the academic course. In the case of the Fluid Mechanics subject (6 ECTS, second course, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Industrial Technologies Engineering Degrees) the 20% of the final qualification is obtained in tests performed at the end of each subject part. The first year (2011/2012) it was observed that less than the 30% of the students passed the tests. However, the 80% of the students that passed the final examination obtained better qualifications in the final exam than in the previous tests. In order to improve the students motivation and performance during the continuous assessment tests, the next academic course new motivation and learning techniques were applied to increase the performance of the students and to obtain better results not only in the tests but also in the final exam. To achieve this purpose, tests proposed the year before were given to the students and solved in class with the help of the professor in a session previous to the test. Moreover, the test was solved in class just after it was carried out so the students could get immediate feedback of their results. With this new procedure the percentage of students that passed the tests was increased and the 51% of the students passed the tests with good qualifications.