How Blended Learning Reduce Underachievement in Higher Education: An Experience in Teaching Computer Sciences.

This paper presents a blended learning approach and a study evaluating instruction in a software engineering-related course unit as part of an undergraduate engineering degree program in computing. In the past, the course unit had a lecture-based format. In view of student underachievement and the high course unit dropout rate, a distance-learning system was deployed, where students were allowed to choose between a distance-learning approach driven by a moderate constructivist instructional model or a blended-learning approach. The results of this experience are presented, with the aim of showing the effectiveness of the teaching/learning system deployed compared to the lecture-based system previously in place. The grades earned by students under the new system, following the distance-learning and blended-learning courses, are compared statistically to the grades attained in earlier years in the traditional face-to-face classroom (lecture-based) learning.

Blended learning in the design of collective protections in building works

The design of collective protections of construction works is a topic that is integrated within one of the MBTI subjects. This paper presents an experience for teaching the design of collective protection in building works. Teaching has been done in a bended way. This subject is taught as part of the content of a wider subject included in the Master "Building Technological Innovation" (MBTI) of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). This Master's degree is a postgraduate of research nature. Graduating in MBTI implies that students are in a position to begin their PhD thesis. At this stage, often students are not able to follow the rigour established by the schedule of classes. For this reason it is interesting that part of the teaching is developed in a non-classroom based way.