Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 242 de 957
Results and Summary
The main issue was to determine what level of students´ motivation was achieved after
one semester in two subjects when the method proposed in the article was applied to
them. The validity of the tests of this study was checked and results did not seem likely to
lead to success of the educational proposal.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The comparison of both methods has not shown important differences. We can conclude
that the application of the two described methodologies did not suppose an increase in
student motivation in the both subjects. These measures contradict the conclusions based
on the perceptions of the professors. In any case, the authors, who had not previous
experience, think that only one semester is a very short time in using this methodology. It
is even possible that this methodology alone cannot increase the motivation of students.
Some failures that have been detected in the implementation could be corrected before
next course. For example, activities about destructive testing have generated overload for
students. In other cases, students have exceeded the number of hours allocated for one
task because of its complexity.
References
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Borrego, M., Douglas, E.P., & Amelink, C.T. (2009). Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed
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Ministerio de Educación (ME) (2003). R.D. 1125/2003, de 5 de septiembre, por el que se
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establece la estructura de las enseñanzas universitarias y se regulan los estudios
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Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011