Active Learning for Engineering Education (ALE)
http://hdl.handle.net/2099/7776
2024-03-28T18:34:55ZDefining, profiling and accommodating learning diversity in an international PBL-environment
http://hdl.handle.net/2099/10399
Defining, profiling and accommodating learning diversity in an international PBL-environment
Lindsay Alcock, Gordon; Blyt, Henrik
This paper investigates the wide diversity of learning experience, values and
expectations of both students and lecturers in an international PBL environment. The
results are based on 24 PBL- related learning parameters (inspired by Hofstede´s cultural dimensions) in the form of two questionnaires – one for students and one for teaching staff. The result quantitatively documents and graphically illustrates the wide diversity of student learning experience, values and expectations and contrasts them with teaching staff.
The paper also documents follow-up research into 62% of the same group of students 18
months after the initial survey – to reveal the extent of accommodation and constructive
alignment. The authors view the paper as ‘action research’ – the findings being specific to their institution, but could be applied to other PBL teaching and learning situations.
2011-05-20T11:36:50ZLindsay Alcock, GordonBlyt, HenrikThis paper investigates the wide diversity of learning experience, values and
expectations of both students and lecturers in an international PBL environment. The
results are based on 24 PBL- related learning parameters (inspired by Hofstede´s cultural dimensions) in the form of two questionnaires – one for students and one for teaching staff. The result quantitatively documents and graphically illustrates the wide diversity of student learning experience, values and expectations and contrasts them with teaching staff.
The paper also documents follow-up research into 62% of the same group of students 18
months after the initial survey – to reveal the extent of accommodation and constructive
alignment. The authors view the paper as ‘action research’ – the findings being specific to their institution, but could be applied to other PBL teaching and learning situations.What does it take to adopt portafolio practices?: the student perspective
http://hdl.handle.net/2099/9361
What does it take to adopt portafolio practices?: the student perspective
Bonada Cruells, Eduard; Sala, Dolors
The objective of a research training process, from the learning perspective, is to
acquire a set of basic competences that translate into a high level of professional and technical maturity. The use of a portfolio as a practical tool can help in this process that spans from the collection of information to the shaping of ideas. In this paper we present a practical materialization of the portfolio, a research-oriented example, together with the perception the student gets out of this practice. In conclusion, being successful in such practices is not straightforward. However, the right combination of persistence, rigorousness and feedback, help speeding up the process.
2010-10-25T10:12:52ZBonada Cruells, EduardSala, DolorsThe objective of a research training process, from the learning perspective, is to
acquire a set of basic competences that translate into a high level of professional and technical maturity. The use of a portfolio as a practical tool can help in this process that spans from the collection of information to the shaping of ideas. In this paper we present a practical materialization of the portfolio, a research-oriented example, together with the perception the student gets out of this practice. In conclusion, being successful in such practices is not straightforward. However, the right combination of persistence, rigorousness and feedback, help speeding up the process.Implementing active learning: a challenge to teachers and students in higher education
http://hdl.handle.net/2099/9330
Implementing active learning: a challenge to teachers and students in higher education
Saalman, Elisabeth
Higher education is in a process of changing conditions. Many of these changes concerns teaching and learning and the challenges both teachers and students need to be able to meet in the near future. This paper deals with teacher role and actions needed to meet the students´ needs and desires in order to create effective learning environments and course design supporting active learning among the students. There is a need to share teaching and learning experiences, to have a continuing dialogue and to work in the direction of offering students active learning possibilities and good learning, both face-to-face and in virtual learning environments. Using flexible learning, digital media and computer-mediated communication are, among other parameters, identified as important ingredients in creating active learning environments to students.
2010-10-04T09:08:46ZSaalman, ElisabethHigher education is in a process of changing conditions. Many of these changes concerns teaching and learning and the challenges both teachers and students need to be able to meet in the near future. This paper deals with teacher role and actions needed to meet the students´ needs and desires in order to create effective learning environments and course design supporting active learning among the students. There is a need to share teaching and learning experiences, to have a continuing dialogue and to work in the direction of offering students active learning possibilities and good learning, both face-to-face and in virtual learning environments. Using flexible learning, digital media and computer-mediated communication are, among other parameters, identified as important ingredients in creating active learning environments to students.Making a virtual learning environment for non-assisted physics laboratory
http://hdl.handle.net/2099/9329
Making a virtual learning environment for non-assisted physics laboratory
Jorge Sánchez, Juan; Mercadé Capellades, Juan María; Conangla Triviño, Laura; Ferreres Soler, Enriqueta
The Physics laboratory is usually the main place where our students of engineering
approach to the physical daily reality, from the technological and the scientific point
of view, through experiments and motivating demonstrations.
Thinking of those students that can not follow an established schedule of attendance
to the classroom, an innovative educational material has been created, which is based on digital filming of the experiments that nowadays are carried out in our real Physics laboratory. The objective is to minimize the lack of acquisition of some abilities associated with the real experimentation, by means of the use of virtual experiments and by working others individual competences by a streaming video.
The filming is accompanied by some tutorials that introduce the experiment and illustrate the associated theoretical concepts, together with some simulations.
Evaluation and self-evaluation tests are also available to monitor the student’s
learning. Anyone can find all the material in the webpage:
http://www.epsem.upc.edu/~practiquesfisica/
After putting these materials into practice, we have carried out a survey in which the
students compare the real and the virtual experimentation systems and to ask their
opinion about the quality of the generated material for two different experiments.
The answers of the students encourage us to produce more material of this kind and to improve the autonomous learning of our future students of engineering.
2010-09-30T12:41:04ZJorge Sánchez, JuanMercadé Capellades, Juan MaríaConangla Triviño, LauraFerreres Soler, EnriquetaThe Physics laboratory is usually the main place where our students of engineering
approach to the physical daily reality, from the technological and the scientific point
of view, through experiments and motivating demonstrations.
Thinking of those students that can not follow an established schedule of attendance
to the classroom, an innovative educational material has been created, which is based on digital filming of the experiments that nowadays are carried out in our real Physics laboratory. The objective is to minimize the lack of acquisition of some abilities associated with the real experimentation, by means of the use of virtual experiments and by working others individual competences by a streaming video.
The filming is accompanied by some tutorials that introduce the experiment and illustrate the associated theoretical concepts, together with some simulations.
Evaluation and self-evaluation tests are also available to monitor the student’s
learning. Anyone can find all the material in the webpage:
http://www.epsem.upc.edu/~practiquesfisica/
After putting these materials into practice, we have carried out a survey in which the
students compare the real and the virtual experimentation systems and to ask their
opinion about the quality of the generated material for two different experiments.
The answers of the students encourage us to produce more material of this kind and to improve the autonomous learning of our future students of engineering.Tintin in the land of PBL
http://hdl.handle.net/2099/9328
Tintin in the land of PBL
Raucent, Benoît; Hernandez, Anne
In PBL, the quality of the problem-situation has the greatest impact on group work and the investment and motivation of the students in the group. A very important
aspect of the situation is that it comforts one’s own misconception. It is only when
one runs up against one’s own misconception that one can hope to truly internalize a
new concept. Tintin is a bottomless source of situations that can be used to confront
students with their misconceptions.
2010-09-30T12:18:14ZRaucent, BenoîtHernandez, AnneIn PBL, the quality of the problem-situation has the greatest impact on group work and the investment and motivation of the students in the group. A very important
aspect of the situation is that it comforts one’s own misconception. It is only when
one runs up against one’s own misconception that one can hope to truly internalize a
new concept. Tintin is a bottomless source of situations that can be used to confront
students with their misconceptions.Protocol and material for the introduction to the laboratory experimentation
http://hdl.handle.net/2099/9315
Protocol and material for the introduction to the laboratory experimentation
Ferreres Soler, Enriqueta; Conangla Triviño, Laura; Mercadé, Joan M.; Jorge Sánchez, Juan
Introducing students in the world of the experimentation has always been a complicated task, since the students are not familiar with the new work place. They
have to handle different measuring devices, interiorize the philosophy of the
experimentation, measure and estimate uncertainty, graph data, and finally write a
report about the results of the experimentation. Students do not know this whole process, and although they delight to do practical work in the laboratory, they do not feel confident of carrying out a proper work.
In order to achieve so, a multimedia material has been elaborated, with an
introduction to the laboratory and the experimental techniques which require the
implication and the autonomy from the student.
The outcome of this process -students setting the established protocol in practice and achieving competences- has been clearly superior to that reached in previous years.
2010-09-21T09:25:29ZFerreres Soler, EnriquetaConangla Triviño, LauraMercadé, Joan M.Jorge Sánchez, JuanIntroducing students in the world of the experimentation has always been a complicated task, since the students are not familiar with the new work place. They
have to handle different measuring devices, interiorize the philosophy of the
experimentation, measure and estimate uncertainty, graph data, and finally write a
report about the results of the experimentation. Students do not know this whole process, and although they delight to do practical work in the laboratory, they do not feel confident of carrying out a proper work.
In order to achieve so, a multimedia material has been elaborated, with an
introduction to the laboratory and the experimental techniques which require the
implication and the autonomy from the student.
The outcome of this process -students setting the established protocol in practice and achieving competences- has been clearly superior to that reached in previous years.The debate between the students: element of learning knowledge and skills
http://hdl.handle.net/2099/9314
The debate between the students: element of learning knowledge and skills
Almajano Pablos, María Pilar; Bou Serra, Jordi; Corral Manuel de Villena, Ignacio de; Domingo Peña, Joan
The debate, between different participants, in that there are requested those who they
compete for a working place that they defend an idea. There is valued his (her) capacity of persuasion, his (her) fluency of speech, his (her) degree of adequacy to the companions and other aspects.
The debate has been prepared for a additive compounds, a subject from Food Technology. The students have defended the positions with valid arguments (the same ones that were in use previously in the exhibition on the part of the professorship on having given these topics).
It is a good skill to face up to themes with contradictory scientific information.
2010-09-21T09:12:25ZAlmajano Pablos, María PilarBou Serra, JordiCorral Manuel de Villena, Ignacio deDomingo Peña, JoanThe debate, between different participants, in that there are requested those who they
compete for a working place that they defend an idea. There is valued his (her) capacity of persuasion, his (her) fluency of speech, his (her) degree of adequacy to the companions and other aspects.
The debate has been prepared for a additive compounds, a subject from Food Technology. The students have defended the positions with valid arguments (the same ones that were in use previously in the exhibition on the part of the professorship on having given these topics).
It is a good skill to face up to themes with contradictory scientific information.Defying some difficulties of the assessment of several generic competences
http://hdl.handle.net/2099/9313
Defying some difficulties of the assessment of several generic competences
Fabregat Fillet, Jaume; Lleixà Arribas, Teresa; Martínez, F.; Tierno, Juana Maria
A reference to concepts, procedures and attitudes and also to acquisition of capacities was frequent when people were interchanging opinions about the aspects that could be evaluated in a university-level student.
Now, we speak in terms of competences: there are specific competences, generic competences,. Just trying to speak about them is a hard job; to obtain competences will represent an enormous challenge. It’s
important to mention the extensive difficulty to find a common definition of the word "competence". One of the many meanings is: the knowledge needed to do something, the knowledge needed to do something with people, the knowledge needed to do something with criteria, the knowledge of when and why is necessary to do something. Common elements to the numerous definitions are the references to: a set of
conceptual knowledge, the procedures and the attitudes, feasibility in its learning with recurrent training, an explanation on its attainment in the action, its use in an efficient work and a necessary context.
Some of the reasons used for the work by the competences in the educative sphere are the overcoming of the design based on content, the integration of diverse intelligences, the advance towards a unification of the areas of the knowledge, the true connection with a final applicability of the education in the work. A formation in competences demands several experiences that integrate knowledge and the practical design to apply these experiences – including several (and/or many) of them -, selecting and preparing the diverse scenes that promote them. One of the objectives of the hands-on session is to explain and to discuss about this kind of experiences, practical designs and stages.
Even with all their limitations, the conventional tools have been useful for an evaluation of the degree of assimilation of the concepts and the capacities; nevertheless, the task is much more arduous -and with less explicit experience transmissible and transmitted - when a person moves in the reach of the evaluation in values and attitudes, and of the evaluation of the competitions located within a profile. In order to evaluate competences, the educational team defines evidences. This task must be done in team
for many reasons. For example, the fact that many competences transfer the borders of the concrete territory in which an individual professor moves. The mentioned evidences will have to be pertinent, excellent, adapted and realistic.
Often, to elaborate a scheme of the knowledge associated to each competence will identify diverse possibilities to demonstrate the possession of this competence through its development in a practical frame. Nevertheless, some competences (or some groups of competences) can be resisted to the previous practice. Perhaps it would be possible to lodge here the ethical behaviour, the capacity to learn, the responsibility, the team work, the creative and enterprising capacity, the multiple attention to sustainability and the subjects around the communicative capacity. Also the evidences for this sort of
competences are targeted issues in the debates.
Within the previous frame, the authors of this contribution have made tasks destined to the specification of several elements, in the work of the "CAU-AIDA" group of the professors of several universities, within the project #SEJ2007-65786 “Evaluation of competences of the university students in the face of the challenge of the EEES: description of the current scenario, analysis of good practices and proposals of
transfer to different environments” and can offer some results of their task that shows there are options to approach some assessments about many generic competences. The planned procedure is to expose briefly
some experiences and the referred evidences, devoted to the assessment that can be transferred, concerning each of the above mentioned generic competences.
2010-09-21T08:57:05ZFabregat Fillet, JaumeLleixà Arribas, TeresaMartínez, F.Tierno, Juana MariaA reference to concepts, procedures and attitudes and also to acquisition of capacities was frequent when people were interchanging opinions about the aspects that could be evaluated in a university-level student.
Now, we speak in terms of competences: there are specific competences, generic competences,. Just trying to speak about them is a hard job; to obtain competences will represent an enormous challenge. It’s
important to mention the extensive difficulty to find a common definition of the word "competence". One of the many meanings is: the knowledge needed to do something, the knowledge needed to do something with people, the knowledge needed to do something with criteria, the knowledge of when and why is necessary to do something. Common elements to the numerous definitions are the references to: a set of
conceptual knowledge, the procedures and the attitudes, feasibility in its learning with recurrent training, an explanation on its attainment in the action, its use in an efficient work and a necessary context.
Some of the reasons used for the work by the competences in the educative sphere are the overcoming of the design based on content, the integration of diverse intelligences, the advance towards a unification of the areas of the knowledge, the true connection with a final applicability of the education in the work. A formation in competences demands several experiences that integrate knowledge and the practical design to apply these experiences – including several (and/or many) of them -, selecting and preparing the diverse scenes that promote them. One of the objectives of the hands-on session is to explain and to discuss about this kind of experiences, practical designs and stages.
Even with all their limitations, the conventional tools have been useful for an evaluation of the degree of assimilation of the concepts and the capacities; nevertheless, the task is much more arduous -and with less explicit experience transmissible and transmitted - when a person moves in the reach of the evaluation in values and attitudes, and of the evaluation of the competitions located within a profile. In order to evaluate competences, the educational team defines evidences. This task must be done in team
for many reasons. For example, the fact that many competences transfer the borders of the concrete territory in which an individual professor moves. The mentioned evidences will have to be pertinent, excellent, adapted and realistic.
Often, to elaborate a scheme of the knowledge associated to each competence will identify diverse possibilities to demonstrate the possession of this competence through its development in a practical frame. Nevertheless, some competences (or some groups of competences) can be resisted to the previous practice. Perhaps it would be possible to lodge here the ethical behaviour, the capacity to learn, the responsibility, the team work, the creative and enterprising capacity, the multiple attention to sustainability and the subjects around the communicative capacity. Also the evidences for this sort of
competences are targeted issues in the debates.
Within the previous frame, the authors of this contribution have made tasks destined to the specification of several elements, in the work of the "CAU-AIDA" group of the professors of several universities, within the project #SEJ2007-65786 “Evaluation of competences of the university students in the face of the challenge of the EEES: description of the current scenario, analysis of good practices and proposals of
transfer to different environments” and can offer some results of their task that shows there are options to approach some assessments about many generic competences. The planned procedure is to expose briefly
some experiences and the referred evidences, devoted to the assessment that can be transferred, concerning each of the above mentioned generic competences.Teaching with emerging experience: to develop leadership and innovation skills
http://hdl.handle.net/2099/9312
Teaching with emerging experience: to develop leadership and innovation skills
Dagot, Dimitri; Delle-Vedove, Serge; Roullet, Luc; Pasquet, Nicolas; Gillet, Michel; Pareau, Dominique
This paper is based on a hands-on session proposed at ALE 2009 Conference (Active
Learning for Engineering Education). It presents a teaching practice used at Ecole
Centrale Paris (ECP) to foster engineering students’ leadership and innovation skills and to help them going through major paradigm shifts.
Considering a class as a human complex system, teachers work in a posture of facilitators or coaches who orchestrate a learning process. Instead of transmitting knowledge as traditional professors, they focus on the relationships in the classroom and the experience emerging from them.
2010-09-20T14:57:27ZDagot, DimitriDelle-Vedove, SergeRoullet, LucPasquet, NicolasGillet, MichelPareau, DominiqueThis paper is based on a hands-on session proposed at ALE 2009 Conference (Active
Learning for Engineering Education). It presents a teaching practice used at Ecole
Centrale Paris (ECP) to foster engineering students’ leadership and innovation skills and to help them going through major paradigm shifts.
Considering a class as a human complex system, teachers work in a posture of facilitators or coaches who orchestrate a learning process. Instead of transmitting knowledge as traditional professors, they focus on the relationships in the classroom and the experience emerging from them.Active learning strategies applied to experimental research works conducted by foreign students in food engineering studies
http://hdl.handle.net/2099/9311
Active learning strategies applied to experimental research works conducted by foreign students in food engineering studies
Achaerandio Puente, María Isabel; Carbó Moliner, Rosa
Foreign students that come for a short stay usually need a cultural adaptation process
due mainly to lacks in language skills and cultural differences. These facts involve
that some alternative methods have to be developed in order to optimize the short
time of the stay to achieve efficiently the knowledge objectives. This work showed
an active learning experience applied at the ESAB-UPC at the spring semester of 2008. We can point that the use of active learning in research work that cover different disciplines could be a useful strategy for integrating students from other countries.
2010-09-20T14:47:18ZAchaerandio Puente, María IsabelCarbó Moliner, RosaForeign students that come for a short stay usually need a cultural adaptation process
due mainly to lacks in language skills and cultural differences. These facts involve
that some alternative methods have to be developed in order to optimize the short
time of the stay to achieve efficiently the knowledge objectives. This work showed
an active learning experience applied at the ESAB-UPC at the spring semester of 2008. We can point that the use of active learning in research work that cover different disciplines could be a useful strategy for integrating students from other countries.