Abstract:

From some years to the present, we have been using several communication tools (mainly doubts forum, suggestions forum, and Workshops) within the MOODLE platform to improve the teaching-learning process. One of the main features of these tools is that a better tutorial work can be obtained of the learning process achieved by the students during the resolution of the most complicated problems of the subject. When each teacher has a large number of subjects to teach and an important number of students in each subject, a personal follow-up of the homework is almost impossible. Therefore a completely different approach is needed. In our approach, instead of the personalized correction, we ask each student to perform a peer-reviewing of the homework presented by their colleagues. Some students’ skills are improved with this process, because the students can see other different approaches to the same problem. In addition, the students can realize the importance of the clearness of the ideas and language to understand what other person meant. And finally, the evaluation process of the teacher can be understood better by the students.

During the 2013-14 and 2014-15 academic years, we have carried out an Innovative Education Project. In this project we have presented the results of satisfaction of the students, which was studied by anonymous polls. These polls have 13 questions, and the first 7 questions are related to the general features of the specific subject. Whereas that items 8 to 10 ask about the virtual workshops, and the items 11 to 13 are dealing with the classroom workshops. All questions are evaluated between 0 (absolute disagreement) and 10 points (absolute agreement).

In this work we present the results for the subject “Environmental Engineering” of the third year of the Graduated in Chemical Engineering. The total number of student in this subject is of 54, and the results indicate a medium level of satisfaction of the students with the peer-review system, because the average for the question number 8 (general evaluation of the virtual tool) is 5.9 and 4.9 for 2013-14 and 2014-15 academic years respectively.