Abstract:

Methodology of laboratory sessions follows in most of the subjects the same structure: the teacher makes an initial presentation on the aim of the session and the methodology that must be followed to achieve this goal, and from this moment the students begin to work. Sometimes, in addition, this initial explanation lasts so long, that the sessions are short to accomplish the proposed objectives. In others, the time-outs between different steps of the procedure are so long, that students are tempted to use their mobile phone as a leisure tool. In this context, the objective of this innovation carried out in the subject Food Industries of the degree of Agricultural Engineering of the UPV is the use of the student’s personal mobile phone as a learning tool used during the session time-outs. For this purpose, the students were divided into different working groups. Each group was assigned a topic related to the session (context of the practice, legislation, industrial machinery…) that they should be able to explain to their colleagues at the end of the session using their own mobile phone a source of reliable information. At the end of the session, the students had to expose their findings to the rest of the class, developing therefore the effective communication student outcome in an informal context. In this way, it was possible to reduce the teacher's initial exposure time, ath the same time that time-outs were transformed in an opportunity to learn and develop student outcomes. Two months after the end of the last practical session, the students were given an unannounced test that contained 10 test questions related to the topics exposed at the end of the sessions. The satisfaction of the students with the methodology and their perception of the degree of contribution of the methodology to the development of their effective communication student outcome was also evaluated through a survey carried out with 51 students. The results of the survey showed that the students retained a large part of the contents, despite the fact that they were not required to study or memorize these contents, reaching a permanent learning. On the other hand, 67% of the respondents agreed that activities such as this one in which the development of the effective communication student outcome is strengthened in an "informal environment”, favoured to a large degree the loss of their stage fright and the increase of their self-confidence.

Keywords:

Time-outs reduction, mobile phone, self-learning, permanent learning.