(640)INDIVIDUAL OR GROUP ACTIVITIES AND THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS IS IMPORTANT IN PROBLEM - BASED LEARNING AND OTHERS ECTS METHODS

摘要

In order to determine how affect in academic performance the use of ECTS methods, the number ofstudents who went to exam, the number of students who passed the exam and the average note hasbeen compared in harmonized groups (academic years 2008 to 2010)and no harmonized groups(academic years 2001 to 2007)in Biochemistry, subject of the 3rd year in the degree of Chemistry ofthe Universitat Jaume I. In addition, it has been compared in harmonized groups how affect thenumber of students (Group A: there were 56 pupils and in Group B: 25)and how affect the use ofgroup activities (academic year 2008-2009)o individual activities (academic year 2009-2010). In noharmonized class the 56 % of pupils went to exam but only pass the 40 % and the average note was6.5. In harmonized class at the academic year 2008-2009 there were two groups (A and B)it wasused continuous assessment model and the ECTS structure was the same for the two groups.However, although the percentage of students that participate in all proposed compulsory activitiesand the number of students in the first call was similar (75 %), in Group A only passed 44% of thestudents with an average of 4,5 points, whereas in Group B passed 84% of student with an average of7 points. This shows that even if the students think to be prepared, in big groups they don’t learncorrectly the different proposed skills. Moreover, marks from the different partial activities show thatbig groups are not effective. In these ones, they don’t work together adequately and not all of themspend the same time in the task, not obtaining good results. The next year (2009-2010)there weretwo groups with approximately 25 pupils each group, the ECTS structure was the same like in theprevious year, but the activities (exercises, written work)were mostly carried out individually and not ingroup. In this case the number of students in the first call were lightly higher than the previous year(90 %), the number of students which pass the exam were higher (>60%)with an average similar(7.5).Globally we can observe that in harmonized courses the percentage of students which go and passthe exam and the average is greater than in the not harmonized courses. However, the studentsevaluated worse to the teacher. It is possible that although the students learn more when using ECTSmethodologies, they evaluated worse to the teacher possibly because the students have to work moreduring the course when ECTS methods are used.