DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A PLAN TO IMPROVE ON THE COMMUNICATION TO PROMOTE THE PARTICIPATION OF STUDENTS IN INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING DEGREES CURRICULUM

Given the apparent low participation of students in the learning-teaching process detected in industrial engineering degrees at our school, the authors have designed and developed an improvement plan that analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the (internal and external) communication process infrastructure. The key variables have been categorized through an affinity array that has been developed from a survey of the different interest groups of the degrees, and correlations have been discriminated between the different existing variables. Accordingly, the organ directly related to the results of this study will be the Director of the School, because the study will provide indicators to justify his/her Strategic Plan. In addition, students are expected to approach the faculty of the degree, through the involvement of the Student Council and teachers who are involved in the philosophy degree at the University Guidance Service of the University. The students will also have the ability to interact with the faculty of the degree and with other bodies outside the University (guest speakers, Engineer Associations, etc.). Also teachers, because they will be invited to take part in the process, and especially involved in decisions that may be taken, besides having to engage in a more genuine communication. School itself, in general, may apply the conclusions and the methodologies applied to the rest of their qualifications.

The objectives are: analyze the communication in the process of learning-teaching degree from the interest groups involved; to develop an instrument to assess motivation, accountability and participation of students and faculty; analyze existing satisfaction of the interest groups; to obtain the correlations among the variables involved, while the causes that base correlations are discriminated; propose a plan for improvement, achievement of which cover the main variables involved. The implementation strategy includes: to design specific survey on communication and participation for the stakeholders; pass and contrast sampling surveys to students, faculty and administration; acquisition of qualitative results and the corresponding correlations to generate an affinity array with the most important variables; proposal for an improvement plan based on processes with the implementation of various tasks and activities to influence the weaknesses detected, or enhance the strengths observed, through the definition of the corresponding corrective actions, preventive or improvement; obtaining feedback for applying a PDCA methodology.

The outcomes of the efforts to influence the improvement of the weaknesses observed have been measured after undertaking various corrective and/or preventive tasks, which have been considered necessary. Interesting changes have been observed, demonstrating the effectiveness of the taken measures. The results are encouraging, but only show trends, having been applied and studied throughout the 2009-2010 school year. The initial assessments of teachers and the results students have provided differ greatly. The correlation has shown that there is adequate communication (internal and external) between the interest groups involved. Furthermore, the designed methodology allows establish a working protocol for an improvement team to carry out the evaluation of the results of the strategy deployed.