Abstract:

The great difference in our days between the professional profile demanded by companies and that offered by Higher Education institutions requires a deep redesigning of the teaching and learning method. In this sense, competence-based learning (CBL) offers a new educational approach centered in the student’s acquisition of those key competences essential in their professional future personal career. Within this map of competences that are articulating the on-going grades, the Capacity of Analysis and Synthesis is one of the most valued in Science Grades.
In this article, we present the results obtained when applying a b-learning approach on the chemistry subject, with the main aim in mind of developing the competence Analysis and Synthesis Capacity. This innovative experience was carried out with first-year students in the Energy Engineering degree at the Rey Juan Carlos University. In this study, we took all the advantages offered by the Learning Management System (LMS), the Web-CT that is employed at the URJC, as well as useful free synchronous and asynchronous communication tools currently available on the Internet, apart from additional learning based on class and laboratory lectures. This new approach has allowed reaching this initially proposed objective, as well as improving last year academic results. Interestingly, the inspection of the surveys performed revealed that the academic results present a remarkable improving in the acquisition level in this competence and a high grade of students’ satisfaction. In addition, this experience has served to engage students with the subject, as they feel the protagonist of the learning process.

Keywords:

b-learning, TIC, competence-based learning, VLE, synchronous, asynchronous communication tools.