Focus group as a qualitative evaluation tool of a university teaching project based on infographics, in the heritage conservation and restoration area

Abstract

[EN] During the project ¿Infographics Applied to University Teaching¿, supported by the Institute of Educational Sciences -ICE- of the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia -UPV-, we implemented the use of individual and shared group infographics. In this work, we have collected the students' reflections on the use of infographics as a tool in university teaching through the means of a focus group at the end of the teaching experience. The focus group has been assembled with a parity selection of the students for equity gender and with a specific selection of questions for data collection. In this study, we will analyse the information obtained in-depth, in order to extract the advantages, disadvantages and possible improvements for the use of infographics in the university classroom. The analysis has been based on the incorporation of individual and shared group infographics. The students created individual infographics based on the complex exercises that they have elaborated in the classroom, adding to them their own conclusions. For the shared group infographics, they created joint research, in teams of four to five students. After this exercise, they presented and debated their work in the classroom. The graphic representation that is created with infographics helps increase in-depth learning, as it allows students to establish a hierarchy of the contents, organize them graphically and present the final figure to their classmates. The results of this experience gathered from the data in the focus groups, show that the students valued it positively, the acquisition of content, self-regulation, and collaborative work. Moreover, analysing their experience with this teaching innovation encourages them to reflect on their metacognitive learning process and helps us to understand the scope of our actions.