Abstract:

In this paper, we analyse the use of questionnaires as a learning and teaching methodology, as a complement of other techniques or activities.
Within the process of implementation of active teaching methods, one way of promoting such transformation is from the basis, through the performance of exercises and tasks which insist on the most basic aspects and maybe the most usual and important ones. In particular, the questionnaires can be useful devices to promote this kind of learning, and to get feedback on aspects of teaching.
This is a tool that students can find useful as well as teachers. For the teachers, they can be helpful in gathering information and data about students' learning, in finding out students' perceptions and attitudes, or in exploring changes in students' understanding and concept development. Finally, it can also be a useful method of obtaining information essential to evaluation. For the students, the questionnaires provide a tool which helps to get a better understanding of the concepts previously explained and to obtain a lifelong learning. The execution of the questionnaires, by part of the students, focused on the basic contents help the student to be capable of dominating, understanding and using the main concepts and results of the subject.
Furthermore, these questionnaires may be implemented in several ways: face-to-face interviews (for example, for the preliminary questionnaires), in the classroom (after a theme of the subject or a collection of concepts in a domain), or virtually (using the simple platforms which provide a way for teachers to quickly develop online questionnaires). This activity may also be carried out individually or by groups of students.
The idea behind the method is to encourage self-reflection, and also promote collaboration between students. Using questionnaires as a learning aid, and making the students into researchers of their own thought processes, we can constitute an interesting double reversal of roles worth exploring.

Keywords:

Innovation, learning and teaching metodologies, lifelong learning, education.