Alternative Techniques to Improve the Academic Improvement Performance within the Basic Sciences’ Learning

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop and apply an alternative teaching-learning model for basic sciences. It should be specifically focused on Physics and Statistics areas to develop strategies that facilitate these subjects’ comprehension in engineering students. A model of cognitive approach is created, based on an investigation of new educational practices that have been developed in the field of college education. Here, the concepts of teaching the understanding and collaborative learning are related to methodologies that are based on real life issues and on an approach to projects and laboratory experiences. All of them together are non-traditional assessment tools as hetero-evaluation and self-evaluation. To validate this model, two main activities were carried on, the first was the application of the model to two groups of students in the Physical Field and four groups of students in the Statistics Field, both from the Faculty of Engineering. These groups were compared to the same courses that received traditional teaching techniques. The results confirmed that with the developed model, the students have a better comprehension of the proposed topics, seeing this situation reflected on their academic performance, which is considerably different from the one of the groups that worked with traditional methodologies.