Pablo Moreno-Ger’s blog

For anyone thinking that I had actually taken a two-month vacation, I wish you were right. It’s been a hectic return from vacation, with trips, exams and setting up a new course. We are starting our classes next week, and I am both thrilled and a bit overwhelmed with this exciting new course.

This year I’m going to be teaching a brand new course in Programming Fundamentals that marks the start of Bologna-compliant grades in our school. We are changing mostly everything about how we teach this subject, adopting a model that favors day-to-day work rather than a single high-stakes final exam. In theory, this should be better for the students. Studying in small amounts, having smaller groups and having numerous evaluations and reviewed practical exercises sound like good learning principles.

However, how this will work in practice is an unknown. The average student here simply does not go to class. Last year, in one of my groups with 71 enrolled students, the average attendance at the beginning of the semester was 18, a number that dropped to 9 by the last month. This suggests that schedule compatibility and the model based in a single exam seriously affected attendance. On the other hand, only one of the students with over 90% attendance throughout the course ended up failing the exam. Does this suggest that day-to-day attendance and work facilitate passing? Most likely, although this could also be a mere correlation: good students that would pass anyway tend to attend lectures.

What will happen now? Will students maintain low attendance ratios and try to pass with the minimum compulsory attendance (their top potential grade would be capped at 60%)? Will students actually focus, attend lectures and pass more easily? Will we have students attending but failing? Even if it is a lot more work, I am happy to be involved in this new course experience. This is change in how we teach. Not a dramatic change, but a change nonetheless. And if we do it right, we will demonstrate that university teaching and learning can change after all.