In response to globalisation, and the cultural, socio-economic, and educational changes it implies, higher education must offer a comprehensive education that favours personal and professional growth. To do this, it must promote competence-based learning through active teaching methodologies. This study will analyse the use of Project-Based Learning (PBL) methodologies in the context of transversal subjects, as an efficient technique to develop interpersonal communication and teamworking skills. This research is quasi-experimental, with a pre-test/post-test design with an equivalent control group. The sample consists of 610 university students from the Community of Madrid, of whom 387 participated in the PBL (Experimental Group: EG) and 223 did not (Control Group: CG). A reliable and validated questionnaire on personal competences was used as a measurement instrument. The hypotheses on the effectiveness of PBL as a technique for the development of interpersonal communication and teamworking skills in the context of transversal subjects are confirmed. The results suggest that greater use of active methodologies to promote the development of transversal or generic competences is highly recommended and that the insertion of transversal subjects into university curricula may be highly beneficial.
Have you ever thought what would happen if a ransomware infected your laptop? This type of virus kidnaps files and encrypts them, and the only way to recover the data is by paying in bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency. This situation is undoubtedly terrible. All of your work, projects, and personal files will not be available (unless you pay the ransom). The first time students watched a video that contextualizes this stressful situation, they thought that they had been attacked by a computer virus. Fortunately, the panic only lasted a few seconds. This is the way to start a game called breakout or escape room. The difference between these two words is that, in the first case, the goal is to open a padlocked box, while the objective of an escape room is to find the key that allows to get out of a room. Both games are similar, containing riddles, puzzles, problems and some clues that would help the players to find the solution. This study analyses the use of a breakout game for educational purposes, more specifically in a university context. The experiment conducted mixes game–based learning methodologies with engineering students learning Linear Algebra, Calculus or Cryptography, which has allowed us to obtain promising results about the usage of this methodology.
Service-learning (SL) helps engineering students to be involved in community activities and to be motivated by their studies. Although several reviews and research studies have been published about SL, it is not widespread in sciences and engineering at the university level. The purpose of this research is to analyze the different community services or projects where SL is implemented by engineering students and faculty and to identify the procedures that were usually implemented to assess SL-based courses and activities. Assessment could be considered as the evaluation of a specific module and the engineering competencies, the evaluation of the effectiveness of the SL program, the assessment of the participation of the student in those programs, and the assessment of whether students have achieved certain outcomes or gained specific skills. We conducted a systematic review with a search in three scientific databases: Scopus, Science Direct, and ERIC educational database to analyze the assessment methods and what that assessment covers. From 14,107 publications related to SL, 120 documents were analyzed to inform the conclusions of this study. We found that SL is widely used in several universities as experiential education, and it is considered an academic activity. The most widely used assessment technique is a survey to evaluate the engagement and attitudes of students and, to a lesser extent, teamwork presentations.
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