Analysis of the application of Socrative as a tool for the learning improvement in a subject of Experimentation in Chemical Engineering

Abstract

[EN] Experimentation in Chemical Engineering III is a compulsory subject of the third course, semester B of the Chemical Engineering Degree at the Universitat Politècnica de València. It is the last experimental subject of the degree, and the methodology applied is "Project Oriented Learning" (POL). Students carry out experimental sessions, obtaining data that they later use to design an industrial installation based on the laboratory equipment but at a large scale. The course is assesed through the design project and a laboratory report of each experimental session, which is corrected by the teacher and then used as study material for the exam.

Although the development of the subject is satisfactory, the teachers do not know the level that the students have about the experiment to be developed at the beginning of the experimental session and, in most of the cases, mistakes or errors of interpretation that they have had during the practice are detected during correction of the report. Therefore, last year teachers decided to introduce the use of the Socrative tool to conduct surveys to students at the beginning and the end of each session, in order to have real-time feedback on the points that should be most emphasized during the practice, as well as the degree of improvement achieved after the session. Socrative allows to carry out surveys in a simple way through the mobile phone, and to know at the same time the results of the assessment. Thus, students know their mistakes in the test before starting the experimental session, which also is useful to them to assess their level about the topic to develop and pay attention to find out those questions asked in the test in which they have obtained worse results.

This work describes the implementation of this teaching innovation in the laboratory, as well as the results obtained and the degree of improvement achieved by comparing the results at the beginning and end of each experimental session. Finally, it is analysed the usefulness of the innovation, as well as the necessary improvements to continue its application in the future academic courses.