Abstract:

Offering undergraduates opportunities to interact with students with Specific Needs of Educational Support (SNES) contributes to the pulling down of barriers which prevents inclusive education from taking roots into university. Service-Learning projects have proved to be effective means of achieving this goal of building up bridges between university and communities excluded from regular education. This study explores competencies and values developed by Engineering and Education students who took part in Service-Learning project LCT (Learning Communities through Technology) within English as their common curricular subject for a semester. The project involved the design of micro-sessions of basic English on different topics related to everyday situations. For safety reasons, due to Covid-19 pandemic, face-to-face presentations and interaction with students with SNES were discarded. Audio-visual materials were used for presentations of English content, which was taught to students with intellectual disabilities by means of Blackboard Collaborate as Learning Management System (LMS). Necessary adaptations of materials and activities were made in order to turn them more accessible to students with intellectual disabilities. The use of digital tools and a virtual classroom on an online platform for the first time was a real breakthrough in the Special Education Centre. As well as the university students’ subjective perceptions, their intrinsic motivation is analysed so as to withdraw valid conclusions referring to the motivational factors which may have influenced their teamwork and participation in the project.

Keywords:

Inclusive education, service learning, Special education, motivation, Higher Education, Learning Management System.