Activities to Promote the Self-Learning of the Effective Communication Student Outcome

Abstract

Universities all over the world are implementing a competence-based type of teaching and learning to guarantee certain student learning outcomes at the end of the studies. To reach these student outcomes, active methodologies should be included in teaching practice at the same time that carefully designed rubrics might be used for the evaluation of the students. Despite the fact that teachers introduce more and more authentic tasks in the classroom, these activities are not still well employed by all the University teaching staff. The goal of this work is to propose a guideline of activities to promote the self-learning of the effective communication outcome by the students. For that purpose, rubrics to assess the outcome proficiency developed by different institutions have been collected and analysed. From those rubrics, six main areas of proficiency have been identified: personal disposition towards communication, quality of the presentation content, structure of the speech, verbal language, non-verbal language and presentation tools. Finally, for each of these areas, keywords to find out effective activities on Internet to improve the proficiency of a piece of the outcome have been proposed.

Application of a Self-Learning Methodology for the Enhancement of the Oral Communication Student Outcome in International Business Studies

“…Second, users were requested to perform a self-diagnosis test at home to assess their initial mastery level of the oral communication outcome [8], using their recent experience on the Oral Practice 1 as reference. After completing the test, an e-mail was sent to them with the answers accompanied with URL links pointing to on-line self-learning activities, specifically devoted to work every aspect covered by the test [9]. The realization of these activities, to be done at home, was optional for the students.…”

Impact of the "Comunicat" Methodology on the Improvement of the "Effective Oral Communication" Student Outcome of the Students of the Master in Food Safety and Quality Management

“…Secondly, the students were invited to take a self-assessment test to reflect on their weak and strong points in the preparation and execution of the oral presentation [2]. Based on the score in each of the sections of the self-assessment test, students were recommended to work on specific activities to improve their weaknesses [3]. At the end of the course, students were asked to prepare a new presentation.…”

“…Throughout the project, different actions have been carried out: a) design of a self-assessment test of the student's effective communication result [2] b) development of self-learning itinerary based on the initial level of proficiency [3] and c) evaluation of the impact of the methodology in different groups of students from the Universitat Politècnica de València and Universitat de València (Spain) [4,5].…”

Web-Based Technological Tools to Support the Development of the Student Outcome "Effective Communication"

“…3 Based on the results obtained in the self-diagnosis tool, a specific self-formative itinerary is proposed to the student to improve those indicators that do not meet the minimum required mastery level [6].…”

“…• Self-formative itinerary: PDF document that specifies, based on the answers provided by the students in the self-diagnostic test, the set of activities in which the student should work to improve his/her mastery level [6]. These activities are hosted on the web as HTML pages.…”