Comparación del aprendizaje en la asignatura de circuitos eléctricos mediante uso de problemas de alta complejidad y evaluación frecuente

Although some subjects included in the basic cycle within the different engineering programs present intermediate level of complexity in their concepts, they also show great learning difficulties by pupils, evidenced in the large reproving rates. These subjects such as Circuit Theory in Electronics and Electrical Engineering, not only expose the students to basic key concepts that will be needed to introduce them into further disciplinary content in more advanced subjects, but also the covered topics are fundamental in the sense that they confront the pupils to new ways of thinking such as deductive thinking, problem solving and integration of previous knowledge. One of the more frequent objections from the students, is the difference between the difficulty in the exercises taught in the classroom used as a concept demonstration and the problems complexity proposed as part of the exams. This paper discusses a guided study methodology where the pupils attend to one or two theoretical sessions where the main concepts are presented mainly using practical but simple examples, followed by group work sessions where they are confronted with high difficulty exercises, taken from past exams. In this case, the solutions to those high level exercises is avoided deliberately. In this manner the students are exposed to collaborative learning and collective knowledge construction. In addition to a more frequent evaluation – usually between 5 and 10 partial examinations during the semester term – the methodology has shown an increment of 25% in the cumulative results for two consecutive semesters.