Mejora de la motivación del alumnado mediante la realización de un debate en la materia de Sistemas Inteligentes

Abstract

In our course “Intelligent Systems” in the Degree of Computer Science in the Universidade da Coruña there exists a gap between the contents that are taught (more theoretical and laying the foundations of the subject) and what the students think that they will learn in a course related to Artificial Intelligence. This fact de- creases their motivation in some cases since they do not see the relation with real cases. In the academic year 2016/2017 we presented a new activity that con- sisted in a debate about some interesting and contem- porary topic related to Artificial Intelligence, as well as a short essay so that they could describe their impres- sions about this matter. Hence, we were able not only to work on specific and basic competences of the sub- ject, but also on the cross curricular ones, that are often disregarded. In this paper we present the experimental analysis of our proposal, noticing an improvement in the grades with respect to the previous year, and also analyzing the results of the essay and debate. Moreo- ver, we analyze in this article the results of a survey that was conducted among the students. The results confirm that the introduction of this kind of activities increases their motivation and provides the students with a more global knowledge about the subject.