A model for designing learning activities in engineering teaching

Nowadays our students are quite discouraged attending lectures and working. This leads teachers to introduce changes in their lectures which conduct them to design new learning activities as the basis of their teaching. This paper proposes a model for designing learning activities in basic engineering courses. The proposed activities aim to motivate students, promote learning and strengthen the generic skills of oral communication, teamwork and autonomous learning.The paper discusses the use of two templates to design activities. The former contains general information about the activity, while the latter contains all the details for the development of the activity. Usually the latter will serve as material for students to develop the activity; however in some cases it will be necessary to add some additional documentation (web, guides, etc.).The paper describes how to apply the proposed model to five learning activities of basic engineering programming courses. Moreover, the article proposes the usage of two rubrics to assess two of the activities. Finally, the paper presents the student ratings for the learning activities developed. In general, students are satisfied with the activities and they found the activities helpful for enhancing their learning and for acquiring new skills.