Abstract:

An Educational Innovation Project is currently underway at the University of Malaga. The primary goal of the project is to enhance the skills acquired in synchronous online teaching during the COVID-19 confinement, with a specific emphasis on their application in the context of teleworking, which is increasingly becoming established in the business world. The experience is implemented in three subjects across various undergraduate and master's programs: the fourth-year subject “Treatment of Contaminated Soil” in the Chemical Engineering degree, the first-year subject “Mass Exchange Network for Pollution Prevention” in the Master's degree in Chemical Engineering, and the third-year subject “Psycholinguistics Applied to the Study of the English Language” in the English Studies degree.

This paper presents a comparative analysis of academic results achieved by three different student populations after the introduction of teaching innovation. Additionally, these academic outcomes are compared with those of each of the three subjects over the previous three years, excluding the influence of the teaching innovation.

The enrollment numbers for these three subjects differed significantly in the 2022-23 academic year. There were 12 students enrolled in the Master's subject, 21 students in the subject of the Chemical Engineering degree, and 95 students in the subject of the English Studies degree.

The teaching innovation basically involves the synchronous online presentation of tasks developed in groups. The face-to-face format of this type of activity is already common and evaluated in a significant number of subjects. The novelty lies in transferring this activity to meetings in Microsoft Teams. The presentation-debate set has a maximum duration of 30 minutes, allowing speakers to open the debate at the end of the presentation or permitting public intervention at any time during the meeting. The intention is for students to experience the challenges of moderating an online synchronous debate, thus extending collaborative work to the organization of the online event. This activity was conducted during the regular face-to-face classroom sessions distributed throughout the semester.

During the activity, the group that must present is relocated to a seminar room equipped with necessary computer equipment, while the larger group remains in the standard teaching classroom where the presentation is projected. Attendees can participate using the camera and ambient microphone available in the classroom.

This activity is evaluative and contributes to the final grade of the subject, ensuring student motivation. The teacher evaluates both the group of students presenting and the attendees who ask questions.

Acknowledgements:
The teaching team wants to acknowledge the financial support from the Servicio de Formación e Innovación del Vicerrectorado de Personal Docente e Investigador de la Universidad de Málaga through the Innova Project PIE22-069.

Keywords:

Synchronous online presentation, Microsoft Teams, challenges of moderating.