Modules: An Effective Approach to Learning
Modules are one of the most adequate learning formats to train future competent professionals since these are formative units organized around a problem whose complexity requires students to apply knowledge and competences acquired in different courses in an integrated way. In this sense, Modules go beyond the traditional organization of the courses, thus overcoming the deeply rooted disciplinary division which has prevailed over the Spanish Universities. Because of that modules can be designed to be complex learning environments where students acquire new knowledge and competences by confronting the resolution of archetypal or emerging problems (Monereo, 2009) similar to those they will encounter in their future professional activity.
Modules are curriculum units of a more global nature than traditional course, which allow for the design of innovative learning tasks and dynamics. Such innovation lies in the characteristics of the tasks which articulate the students’ learning process and which we may summarize as being:
- More complex: from the point of view of cognitive complexity (they require profound knowledge of concepts from different knowledge fields), personal complexity (tasks which promote the development of students’ awareness as individuals / future professionals by requiring from them a clear positioning regarding the analysed question) and relational complexity (teamwork, influence, leadership).
- More authentic: in that task resolution requires from students the application of learning processes similar to those which take place in the context of real professional activity.
- Transversal: not restricted by the disciplinary conventions found in courses.
Therefore, we will claim that the kind of tasks and learning dynamics that can be proposed in Integrative Modules contribute to the integral formation of students (i.e. involving the participant in the holistic sense of the term) and allow for authentic competence‐based assessment (Gielen, Dochy & Dierick, 2003), characterized by the fulfilment of the conditions detailed below (Wiggins, 1990):
- Students’ achievement is examined on the basis of relevant tasks.
- It requires students to apply the learnt knowledge in situations which are as similar as possible to professional situations.
- The proposed problems are ill‐structured, intentionally ambiguous, reflecting the complexity of the professional world.
- The group of knowledge and competences necessary to solve the specific situation/task is evaluated simultaneously.
- A justified argumentation of the students’ answers to the questions designed to solve the problem is required.
- The ability to act intentionally in social contexts is evaluated.
Among the expected benefits of this type of tasks in students’ learning we can find:
- Students’ adjustment of their learning strategies: If participants realize that the central objective of the task proposed in the Module is to allow for the knowledge and competences learned to be available for the successful resolution of future problems and authentic tasks, they will approach the learning process in a deeper way.
- Increased student’ motivation: the resolution of the tasks involves a challenge, a new situation which allows students to position themselves in the professional’s shoes, approaching their learning to the professional reality.
- Possible retroactive effects upon the teaching ‐ learning process, that is, upon the way professors approach the teaching process. If professors become aware that students will need to face complex and authentic tasks, they may adjustment the way in which they articulate their formative proposals so as to improve students’ achievement and performance in this kind of tasks.
Finally, integrative modules are also an opportunity to promote the global view and collaboration among the professors who teach the different courses of a programme. Their participation in the joined design of the Module’s task and of the assessment architecture allows them to reflect upon the complementarities and differences of the teaching approaches of colleagues from other disciplines and, more importantly, to reflect upon the impact of their coordinated intervention in the learning process of students.