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Improving the Motivation of First-Year Undergraduate Students Through Transversal Activities and Teamwork

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Trends on Active Learning Methods and Emerging Learning Technologies

Abstract

Promoting an increase in motivation in first-year undergraduate students not only results in an improvement in their follow-up, performance, and therefore their satisfaction, but can also lead to a reduction in early dropout due to any situation of frustration or poor results. To confirm the initial assumption, the present research work demonstrates how the work of certain competencies in a transversal way allows the first-time student to increase empathy with the degree while improving interpersonal relationships with their peers being an aspect that significantly affects the intrinsic motivation of the student. The chapter focuses on analyzing the results of two transversal tasks carried out through a teamwork process and monitored during the first year of the Bachelor's Degree in Architecture. For the analysis, we used a mixed approach that allowed us to identify the strengths (enhanced in the new iterations) and weaknesses of the proposal on which we are already acting in subsequent replications of these types of transversal activities.

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Acknowledgements

This study is funded under the project “Improving social and collaborative competences of undergraduate students using active methodologies. A mixed assessment approach”, awarded at the 6th Call for Research Projects by Aristos Campus Mundus (ACM) in 2020, under ID code ACM2020_02.

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Fonseca, D., Necchi, S., Alaez, M., Romero, S. (2022). Improving the Motivation of First-Year Undergraduate Students Through Transversal Activities and Teamwork. In: García-Peñalvo, F.J., Sein-Echaluce, M.L., Fidalgo-Blanco, Á. (eds) Trends on Active Learning Methods and Emerging Learning Technologies. Lecture Notes in Educational Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7431-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7431-1_2

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