Lessons from a B-Learning course in Information Literacy for Engineering Freshmen

• Type: Chapter or Part of a Book
• Date: 2015

Authors

Armando Sousa (Author) FEUP; Manuel Firmino Torres (Author) FEUP; Cristina Sousa Lopes (Author) FEUP; Teresa Oliveira Ramos (Author) Other; Luciano Moreira (Author) FEUP

Book

Title: The e-Learning Excellence Award 2015: An Anthology of Case Histories

Pages: 96-113

Scientific classification

FOS: Social sciences > Educational sciences

Other information

Abstract (EN): This article presents a case study from the “Projeto FEUP” course, taken yearly by about 1000 freshmen at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, in Portugal. The goals of the course include introduction to academic excellence, soft skills and Information Literacy. The article will detail the Information Literacy module. Upon reflection and given the pressure for efficiency, the course was redesigned and improvements were implemented: reducing lectures (“theoretical” classes); eliminating all classical-style “practical” classes; ramping up E-Learning and creating fun but educational hands-on activities run by older students in an integrated B-Learning approach. Moodle is the LMS and repository but it was linked to additional tools such as the Libguides platform in order to provide multi format engaging materials, where the main learning object is built as a WebQuest containing formative evaluation on Moodle activities (with feedback). This student centred strategy considered the technologically minded target audience and their natural curiosity in a world dominated by a WWW without frontiers, whilst maintaining regularity and health of discourse in a “mastery learning” manner. At the end of the course, all students take a Moodle quiz (“midterm”) that remained essentially constant throughout most recent years, thus allowing for comparability. The full article will debate teaching/learning/evaluation issues, including processes and quantitative results. Logistics and operational costs will also be analysed at several points of the implementation, alongside with associated learnings, as measured by the midterm. Results reveal that proper setup of teaching/learning/evaluation is fundamental, even with lower costs of operation and, in this case, even lead to a slight improvement in the results of the midterm. Final notes will show some lessons learned, debate the extrapolation to other realities and discuss further improvements to increase student’s engagement and to enhance learning.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific