Positive effect of increasing feedback for student self-adjustment of learning habits

Abstract

Universities are currently undergoing a significant amount of changes of a conceptual and methodological nature, in compliance with the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). This new scenario promotes new learning and teaching methodologies under specific criteria. In a global sense it can be stated that the main outcome of this new approach is the increased level of feedback required amongst the principal actors in question throughout the learning process (e.g. lecturer and students). In this article we present a scheme in which the organization of the lecture activities (teaching, evaluation, assessment, etc) are organized according to a timeline that respects the overall aim of increasing the amount of feedback a given student receives. Although it may be widely recognized that on-going evaluation constitutes a positive framework that can enhance student performance, this study demonstrates that if all the activities are designed as a whole, the self-feedback of the student is increased and the overall performance improved. The teaching of the subject of “Signals and Systems”; a component of the Computer Science Engineering degree, is used as a case study for this experience. It has been used as a framework and the improvements developed with respect to previous years achieved have been demonstrated with data.