The Learning Improvement of Engineering Students using Peer-Created Complementary Resources

Abstract

In any organization, the individual is considered an issuer of knowledge who can improve corporate knowledge, and learning is considered to be a key factor in promoting the creation of knowledge. As the knowledge of the individual increases, the organization's knowledge also increases. The same happens in educational institutions, but there is a tendency in most educational methodologies to consider the student as a mere recipient of knowledge. This paper presents a model where the student is shown as a knowledge issuer both for their own benefit and for their peers. The key idea is the transfer of knowledge produced by students to organizational knowledge through the knowledge management system the Collaborative Academic Resources Finder (BRACO, for its acronym in Spanish). At the same time, certain quantitative measurement instruments provide insight into student perception of the use of this knowledge in a particular subject in their engineering degree studies as well as the measure of BRACO impact on their learning outcomes. The results of this work show that an experimental group obtained higher scores in tests than a control group. Results also show that BRACO had a significant impact on learning, and students promoted, organized and used the resources generated by fellow students.