THE ROLE OF BLENDING LEARNING TOOLS ON EUROPEAN HIGHER EDUCATION AREA

The construction and development of the European Higher Education Area supposes important changes and challenges for universities. Perhaps one of the most important is that relating to teaching methodologies. The new academic structure, the approach based on competencies, curriculum coordination, continuous monitoring, active student participation, academic activity non-attendance, the use of Internet Communication Technologies, the development of Quality Assurance Systems are major issues that shaped the necessary methodological renewal in the university classroom. For this reason, the learning process at Universities is being promoted with the use of information and communication technologies.

The adaptation of subject to European Higher Education Area (EHEA) implies the adoption of different education systems than the traditional one, which is based primarily on the exposition of content through a master lesson and leaves important gaps in the process of transmission and acquisition of knowledge. In EHEA, subjects are defined in terms of competencies since it is necessary that the students achieve different competencies: one based on the field of study (specific competencies) and others related with some capabilities of the students with the environment (generic competencies), such as relationships, oral and writing communication, making decisions, team work, job ethical behavior, leadershipness, motivation, and so on. In this way, the teacher may use some new mechanisms to teach the matter under study, such as active learning and e-learning, with the aim that the student achieve these competencies.

In this work, different learning tools (webquest, knowledge pills, project based learning, jigsaw, on-line quizzes) have been used and evaluated by the students in an engineering course.