Abstract:

This experience, carried out in IL3-UB (Institute of Life Long Learning – University of Barcelona), is focused on including not only the knowledge and skills of a particular discipline, but also the cross-curricular competence of learning to learn from self-regulation, in student training.

‘Competence’ (Perrenoud, 2004) is understood as the capacity to activate the necessary resources to give an efficient response to a complex situation in a particular context. Competence involves selecting, among one’s knowledge, skills and attitudes, those most appropriate to solve a complex problem, combining them with wisdom and judgment. Therefore, the nature of this competence is: integral (cross-curricular to diverse disciplines and fields), wide (competences influence one another, so the promotion of one of them also enriches the remainder), and recurrent, so their process of formation is life-long —they began with initial and permanent training, and are widened through professional experience (Rogiers, 2004).

In this sense, disposing of tools helping us to improve our competences is essential. These tools must be understood, within the framework of constructivist learning processes, as resources at the service of the learner. According to this, we decided to elaborate support materials for learning processes in the framework of the online courses scheduled by the IL3 with the aim of boosting, especially, the students’ learn-to-learn competence.

The most suitable tools and resources for learning to learn throughout life were selected to elaborate these training materials. The first selection was: information management (location, extraction, organization and evaluation), time control, fostering reading comprehension, management of both autonomous and team work, exam preparation, project design and elaboration, and oral presentation development. These axes allowed us the initial articulation of 11 training materials.

All materials were designed and planned to be tested in a virtual platform, so they should follow certain didactic and methodological patterns and features which characterize online training materials.

These materials are brief (no longer than 4 hours) and structured so as to make students review the basics, verify how they have done so far (self-assessment), deal with some examples, and particularly practice the skills proposed in each case. Materials are structured into common sections such as:
- What is this unit for?
- What should I know?
- How have I done so far?
- How is it to be done?
- Have your try
- In short

Setting off from the implementation of the materials in the virtual classroom, we have received inputs not only from students but also from companies in relation to the usefulness of these learning-to-learn resources. The interest of companies has been so great that they have suggested their implementation in their own working intranets. Therefore, the interest arisen by self-regulation mechanisms goes far beyond formal learning and opens new ways toward workplaces and informal learning.

Keywords:

ICT, self-regulation skills, postgraduate education.