Abstract:

The new paradigm on Higher Education requires promoting autonomous learning by students with a view to facilitating “learning to learn” process. This will stimulates not only the active role of students in their own learning process so their point of view on the importance of continuing education. This continuing education throughout professional life is a really important point regarding areas of knowledge which are constantly changing, like, for example, health sciences. Based on those aspects, we have designed and programmed different activities to promote autonomous learning in different compulsory courses of the Degree in Physiotherapy.

The objective of our study was to assess the participation and involvement of students in learning activities requiring an active role in its own learning process and which were developed within different compulsory courses of the Degree in Physiotherapy.

Three learning activities were developed in order to facilitate autonomous learning (based on the jigsaw technique, a paper reading previous to analyzing an educative video on therapeutics, and the preparation of supplemental questions on the notes provided by the teacher). All those activities were developed within the course “General Physiotherapy” and “Electrotherapy and Ultrasound Therapy” in the academic courses 2012-1013 and 2013-2014. Each activity (there were six in total, three by year) was assessed at the end of it by an ad hoc questionnaire. The students’ participation in such activities was voluntary.

The main outputs observed were, by one hand, the high level of participation by students in the different activities (higher than 70% in five of them), except in one activity that the participation was higher than 50%. By the other hand, it is important to stress the higher level of involvement in those activities which a final “award”. Finally, we would note that all the activities were positively assessed by the students.

As a conclusion, we could say that the higher level of students’ involvement in their own learning process is linked to the fact that this participation is taken into account to their final marks. It seems necessary to promote autonomous learning among our students.

Keywords:

Active learning, Teaching, Higher Education, Physiotherapy.