Abstract:

The University of Jaume I at Castellón (Spain) is aware that increasing collaboration between all the entities involved in the social and economic development of their environment is more necessary. Therefore, it is interested in promoting chairs with the aim of involving the business, institutional and social fabric in the activities of the University.

Meanwhile, Vila-real, a municipality in the province of Castellón, is a national and an international referent in Police Mediation. The City Hall of Vila-real is interested in promoting training, research, development and dissemination in the field of Police Mediation in Vila-real and its surroundings.

These objectives and interests that both institutions have in common in scientific, cultural and social fields have made possible the creation of the Chair of Police Mediation "City of Vila-real" of the University Jaume I, the only one in the world so far.

The Chair of Police Mediation has experience in organizing and imparting courses with the University and the Police Training School of Vila-real. However, for the first time, an outsider institution, the College of Surveyors, Technical Architects and Building Engineers of Castellón, has requested the Chair to impart them a course on mediation in the field of construction and building.

The course "Mediation in the field of construction and building" has had a duration of 100 class hours. This learning experience has had 6 teachers specialized in different areas. The course methodology combined lectures with practical classes in which, mainly, it has been developed the technique of role playing.

It has been a challenge to offer a course of mediation to a different audience to which the Chair of Police Mediation is usually directed. Being this Chair a reference in its sector, this request becomes a significant fact and the positive assessment of the students could open the door to future collaborations that initially had not been raised.

Data to evaluate the opinions of students have been extracted from an anonymous survey that was delivered on the last day of class. To facilitate viewing and comparing the results we have used pie charts in which the relative frequencies of a qualitative variable are represented. In this case the variable is the degree of conformity of students in relation to the statements of each issue. We have distinguished five categories: strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree and strongly disagree.

To obtain the percentages we have followed the following procedure: First, we have added the absolute frequency of each category and we have divided it by the sum of all the absolute frequencies. The result we get from this operation is the relative frequency. Second, to get the percentage, we have multiplied by 100 the relative frequency previously obtained in each category. This same procedure is performed in each statement with each of the five categories.

The survey collects eleven statements. Without going into precise details yet, we can indicate that the percentages of the category "strongly agree" exceed 50% in all statements. And it has reached 85% in the statement that values the knowledge and attitude of teachers and in the one that evaluates the satisfaction with the performance of the Chair of Police Mediation. This positive reading analysis empowers us to take other future challenges.