Abstract:

The use of information and communication methodologies during the University training period implies changes in the way of transmitting knowledge, which traditionally has been disseminated through lectures and conventional activities. These techniques make possible to integrate supplementary material such as images, videos, hyperlinks or interactive activities into the students' educational development, enabling a more attractive learning environment for both students and teachers. The relevance of transferring the acquired knowledge by the students in different forums throughout their academic life clearly justifies the onset of deep changes in all phases conforming the educational system, and especially in higher education. Therefore, the enhancement of communicative skills not only would be useful as a supportive tool in the training of students but also as a development strategy to improve students’ competences under different and increasingly changing fields. Within this variability of scenarios, the knowledge of a second language is of special interest due to the need to transmit the information to a broad public and the interaction with a diversity of agents, being all these aspects included in the general guidelines of university degrees as transversal competences. The dissemination of these concepts in an attractive way is essential to increase society's interest in science and the possibility of doing so in a second language, enabling information to reach a wider and more diverse audience.

This project aims the encouragement of students in terms of collaborative work, incorporating communicative skills techniques (e.g. such as scientific posters) in their training process to facilitate communication and understanding of the theoretical basis that justify everyday phenomena that often go unnoticed [7-9]. To reach this purpose, the students will have to group (3-5 students/group) and chose one of the topics previously proposed by the teachers. They will have to develop the quotidian phenomena and its theoretical foundation following a scientific poster template and give a short talk (2 minutes duration) after which, they should answer several questions. Each group activity will be assessed in terms of originality, accuracy, visuality and quality and by teachers and colleagues following a predetermined 1-5 scored template. The selection of a non-mother tongue to perform this activity will be positively evaluated.

The expected benefits of this pilot proposal will be, among others, the promotion of self-learning, social and communicative skills and the enhancement of the interaction between students and professors, all this under the possibility of reinforcing the knowledge of basic concepts with the added value of the use of a second language.

Keywords:

Communication skills, scientific method, multilingualism.