The integrated project as a learning experience

Florida Universitaria is a higher education centre specialising in technical and business training among other specialist areas. Postgraduate programmes, graduate programmes, vocational training, secondary education, further education, occupational training and languages are taught at Florida. An educational model in accordance with the requirements of the European Higher Education Area has been designed, focussing on teaching for professional competencies. We have chosen to use a methodology which enhances the development of skills and abilities as well as collaborative learning. Also, it is student-oriented as students must search for knowledge by themselves thus connecting the educational and the real world. In the different university degrees taught in our centre, each year students carry out a project which is set in a real context. This project integrates specific competencies from the course subjects and also, it develops transversal competencies associated with the project which are the purpose of planning and progressive learning: team work, effective communication, conflict resolution, leadership skills, innovation and creativity. The integrated project (IP) accounts for 25% of each course in terms of objectives, scheduling and final assessment. The grade achieved by every student in the IP is also part of the student�s final grade for every subject involved in the project (i.e. the above-mentioned 25%). The results presented here show that the IP has not benefited the �bad� students and penalised the �good� ones, as a significant number of students and teachers might have thought at first. The added value of this methodology is the transversal competencies and skills that students can acquire