Abstract:

The paper proposes to address a teaching innovation experience based on the use of a shared virtual learning platform. This tool links subjects from different teaching centres that deals with urban heritage issues or are focused on touristic intervention areas. This experience is contextualised within the Campus of International Excellence Andalucía Tech, linking the Degree in Architecture at the Universities of Seville and Malaga.

As collaborative virtual environments, it is a digital bookshelf where students’ exercises are systematically collected and serves as a means for online discussion in real-time between students and professors. Students can consult additional learning resources and, at the same time, share personal reflections and findings with the rest of the participants.

Faced with traditional teaching forms, in which the focus falls solely on the teacher, the model tested has placed the student at the centre of learning. Work has been carried out on the collaborative construction of the learning content through shared reasoning processes in which students can develop autonomous reasoning skills by fostering active learning. The ultimate goal is to deepen the features of a significant heritage place through different examples, close and recognisable by all of them. It makes them work collaboratively, transforming the finalist product of the traditional master class in a process that leads from individual research and collaborative work to knowledge. Thus, the platform would allow professors to develop reasoning capacity and critical reflection among the students.

This methodology is seen as an opportunity to open up the students’ perspective concerning the different ways of tackling a heritage object. The comparative analysis will allow them to assume additional concepts by not circumscribing them exclusively to their sphere of action. Nevertheless, similar teaching approaches enables the construction of common maxims recognisable by all participants, both students and teaching staff.

Finally, the paper will contextualise this initiative within a broad state-of-the-art on virtual tools in university teaching. Their general use of digital instruments is one of Higher Education’s main challenges, although, unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated its implementation in many European teaching centres, such as the Universities of Seville (Andalusia-Spain). Consequently, the research will analyse and reflect on the suitability of these teaching tools for e-learning experiences and distance teaching, such as those forcibly experienced worldwide during the last year.

Keywords:

Andalucía Tech, Collaborative Learning, CVEs, Digital Tools, e-learning, New Training Strategies, Teaching Innovation, Virtual Learning Environments.