Abstract:

The Biotechnology degree, introduced in Europe within the last decade and at the University of Castilla-La Mancha five years ago, includes a multidisciplinary curriculum that includes fundamental engineering and scientific subjects, along with Information Technology and Economics.

This multidisciplinary degree demands new teaching methods to facilitate the understanding of the key concepts of each discipline. To do this, the feedback of students is very important to know which ones are easier or more difficult for them. Thereby, to facilitate both individual and collaborative learning, we proposed an innovative project focusing on the idea of generating some audiovisual resources, made by the students and being part of the evaluated activity within the different participating subjects, that can be useful for several disciplines included in the degree to better understand the procedures of the key common activities: laboratory or practical classes.

Considering this background, the aim of this work is to provide tools and gather evidence on the effectiveness of new methodologies designed to boost students’ motivation and learning capabilities, thereby improving their career prospects. This approach developed basic skills necessary for working in multidisciplinary teams and equips students to communicate these concepts to the broader society. These activities, in addition to improving the students' attention to the practices they are carrying out, since they will subsequently have to generate an audiovisual product, also provide to the students important soft skills, which are transversal to the entire degree and their subsequent professional career, such as the stimulation of the critical spirit, communication skills, synthesis’ ability, teamwork ability, creativity and management of platforms for the generation of audiovisual content.

To achieve this goal, audiovisual resources were employed (video and audio editors, social networks, scientific database…etc.) conveying subject-specific concepts, promoting self-learning. Among the activities proposed, the elaboration in groups of a 3-minute video-procedure was carried out in ‘Bioreactors’ during their sequential lab activities to develop cooperative learning and computer skills and make the learning process easy for students. The fundamental subject ‘Thermodynamics and kinetics’ proposed the simple explanation of a selected thermodynamic phenomenon in groups using a TV show background. Subjects with a focus on social sciences are also good candidates for including similar activities. ‘Social and legal aspects of biotechnology’ proposed the elaboration of podcasts about current biotechnology topics to get advance of all the experiences that students acquired during all their previous years.

A collaborative framework was established to prevent content duplication and ensure proper semester planning, thereby assisting students throughout the academic year. Qualitative insights were gathered during a final session where students presented their projects to peers and professors, which also served as a grading component. A competitive element, with prizes for the best projects, motivated students to produce professional-quality work. A final questionnaire revealed a high level of satisfaction among students with this collaborative learning environment.

Keywords:

Practical activities, collaborative learning, multidisciplinary degree, audiovisual resources, new methodologies.