The impact of active learning strategies in second cycle students of an engineer course: A case study

In the last years the educational research advocates the use of new teaching and learning approaches, particularly in Higher Education. Simultaneously, the challenges of society requires that Higher Education institutions develop in their students other competences, beyond the academic knowledge. It seems to be consensual that the purpose of Higher Education courses is the development, among its students, of scientific attitude and rigor of reasoning skills, creativity and analysis. Having this in consideration, we implement in the University of Aveiro course of optoelectronics, several strategies that seek to develop transversal competences in future physical engineers. Some of the implement strategies were, for example, minute paper, eBook writing, brainstorming session followed by a concise written report, group development of an experimental short scientific project and feedback assessment to all of these strategies. This paper describes how these strategies were implemented in the course and what students´ opinion about them were. Analyzing the results we can concluded that the strategies had different levels of acceptance and we believe that these levels of acceptance have direct impact on student learning.