Abstract:

Consistent with previous literature, educational institutions have always had the pending task of knowing what really happens in their classrooms, which professors make a real difference, which students would need help to improve their performance, and even more importantly, how to manage the enormous amount of information gathered each year. To address this problem, in this paper we propose the use of retrospective data from 210 subjects, 1.320 ECTS, 10.500 students, and four complete academic courses (18/19, 19/20, 20/21, 21/22), regarding its academic results, existing grade dispersion of the class, and evaluations made to the professors, to generate a monitoring tool or automatic dashboard with which to (try to) optimize the operation of the institutions and help them to make (even more) optimal decisions.

Our results show that despite the existence of many types of methodologies and pedagogical activities to achieve student motivation, the only typology or category that would affect it and its academic results (and therefore, the dispersion present in the classroom) would be if the subjects are related with ‘soft skills’ or ’hard skills’ contents. However, on the contrary, not all types of professors or methodologies would similarly affect the preferences and enjoyment of the student in the teaching received (and effectively paid by him/her), which will vary, again, depending if the subject is more related to ‘soft skills’/’hard skills’, but also if the subject is taught or not in English, the professor is internal to the institution, is relatively young, teaches yearly subjects, and not in a virtual manner.

Thus, our paper gives light to reconsider which variables should actually matter in educational institutions, facilitating teaching thanks to allowing to compare or know the previous results obtained by similar subjects in other years or courses, identifying the ‘star professors’ or ‘MVP professors’ present in the faculty in order to (as far as possible) retain them and try to extend their link/employment relationship with the school, improving students' self-knowledge and planning due to its awareness of their performance and possible evolution throughout the four years, and even breaking previous pre-established mental schemes such as that better grades would generate higher evaluations in the professors.

Keywords:

Student motivation, optimization, automatic monitoring tool, performance, educational methodologies.