Work in progress: Blended learning activities development

• Published in: 2015 International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL) pp. 79 - 81
• Main Authors: Llobregat-Gomez, N., Minguez, F., Rosello, M.-D, Sanchez Ruiz, L. M.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-09-2015
• Subjects: active; blended; Collaborative work; Conferences; creativity; Decision support systems; flipped; learning; partnering
• DOI: 10.1109/ICL.2015.7318231

The upcoming of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has brought out a transformation towards more student centered methodologies which go in the line of much more than catching up with the nowadays times and the uprising of the digital new technologies. Encouraging active learning and entrepreneurship are in the skeleton of competencies that the new engineer must achieve for several reasons. Ideas and solutions to new challenges quite often require creative and innovative engineers that have to catch up with a resilient society where environment and conditions are continuously changing. This contrasts with the traditional input-oriented approach to higher education focusing on the transmission of defined curriculum content. Thus there is need to get even further of a learning outcomes orientation, focusing on what the student is expected to know, understand and be able to do. The shift towards a learning outcomes approach is really a major cultural transformation that is taking time to become fully implemented. In order to tackle this issue from the first stages of a just newcomer university student, the authors propose an active methodology in Mathematics theoretical classes for Aerospace Engineering students that provides activities to be developed by them before each theoretical and problem solving exam comes as part of their apprenticeship. In this way the students are faced in front of activities designed to develop their competencies achievement by promoting their deep understanding of the subject and having to confront their engineering skills while learning a basic subject such as Mathematics. Since these activities are not developed in a controlled environment, students must perform an individual test at the time of delivery to check their authorship and understanding of the processes developed at their activities.