Innovating to Improve – An Experience in a Computer Engineering Programme

This paper presents a pedagogical experience carried out in a course unit of a master’s programme in Computer Engineering at the University of Minho. The course unit, Numerical Methods and Nonlinear Optimization, is placed in the first semester of the third year and the experience took place with 184 students in the academic year 2020-2021. Until then, it had been taught in a traditional way, with theoretical lectures and practical classes for solving exercises. There were several reasons to innovate, namely the need to move to online teaching due to COVID-19, which was an opportunity to introduce new methodologies and technologies, but also the need to foster students’ engagement and performance. A blearning approach was implemented through a combination of strategies and resources, aiming to enhance motivation, interaction and participation in learning. Assessment was more diversified and distributed over time to foster ongoing study and progress. It included mini-tests and two MatLab projects carried out in teams with the main challenge of finding a real-world phenomenon for the application of a course concept, which implied connecting conceptual learning with reality and creating bridges with other areas of knowledge. The experience was evaluated on the basis of students’ assessment results and their perceptions collected in a survey. The new approach resulted in high levels of student engagement and satisfaction, promoting cooperation and the personal construction of knowledge, which are essential competences for lifelong learning. Nevertheless, the development of MatLab projects requires further improvements, not only as regards support to students but also the evaluation of their impact on learning