B-LEARNING METHODOLOGY FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVITY SKILLS IN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

Teaching creative thinking to undergraduate students in industrial engineering requires the design of new methodologies and assessment methods. These methodologies not only need changing the teaching methods, also the learning atmosphere in which traditional classes are carried out.

Nowadays, in order to improve the capabilities of the students the universities have developed new education resources which lead to improve the teaching methodologies. They include the blended learning concept (b-learning) as one of the most innovative tools for developing new ideas in the educational environment. The virtual platforms provided by universities allow having communication between lecturers and student outside the classroom in an easy way. Under this point of view the in-person learning experiences inside the classroom are combined with online teaching classes outside of the educational center. In the case under study in this paper, the creativity capabilities are defined as transversal competences, being the specific competences the technological ones. Although transversal competences are currently considered a key factor of the outcomes of Higher Education, the way in which these competences are implemented in the curricula remains a challenge for which there is little guidance. This paper deals with a case study where the development of creativity skills of the students has been implemented using a b-learning methodology. Thus, the full description of the learning methodology will be described in the paper including the learning activities inside and outside the classroom, with particular emphasis in the use of virtual platforms. The result of this study demonstrates that it is possible to integrate specific and transversal competences by means of using b-learning methodologies. This fact allows developing creativity skills in the student at the same time that they have the opportunity to develop the full level of the cognitive domain. Furthermore, the assessment of these competences can be done easily by the instructor due to the registration of the activities carried out by the students using a portfolio.