Abstract:

In the near future, Spanish universities will have adapted their degrees to the new European directives required by the Bologna process. Since this is a close date, for several years, some pilot experiments with different results have been set up to adapt studies and methodologies to the new philosophy.
From most of the experiments a conclusion has been derived: these changes demand a considerable effort from professors due to the current ratio alumni/professor in Spanish universities and to the fact that the amount of work is directly related to the amount of students. In fact, many times the big number of students that attend university classes in Spain prevents the teacher from applying the new methodologies. This is the situation in most engineering degrees.
To overcome this difficulty, in a previous work the authors presented a proposal to gradually modify the traditional teaching strategies in overcrowded groups, where educational innovations are really hard to carry out, in order to accomplish the objectives proposed by the European harmonization. It was centred in the adaptation of the content and the evaluation of the Mechanics subject and satisfactory results were obtained, with an increase of 21% in the number of students who passed the course over the previous year.
In this work, different alternatives for evaluation in overcrowded groups are discussed. In particular, a further step has been taken towards the modification of the teaching/learning methodology introducing multimedia material and e-assessment as one of the evaluation tools in the Mechanics subject. This is the first stage in the introduction of e-learning tools in this major, taught in the first year of the degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Universitat Jaume I.
Electronic learning is nowadays a reality that has been possible due to the recent advances in technology. It is a fact that the new generation of students is very interested in information technologies and this circumstance allows accomplishing changes in the traditional education paradigm, as the introduction of e-learning tools. These tools can be a great help for academics when dealing with lots of students and can complement traditional methods, giving more effective experience to the learner. In order to evaluate the benefits of these new tools, comparisons between classical and new methodologies are provided.

Keywords:

evaluation, overcrowded groups, e-assessment, methodology, mechanics.