Combining Adaptive and Cooperative Learning Strategies to Deal With Heterogeneity in Large Groups

Abstract

In undergraduate university degrees, students start their first year with a high level of heterogeneity in terms of acquired curricular competences. Therefore, the teaching given in these courses must face the challenge of turning this heterogeneity, in principle counterproductive, into an added value that helps students to face the subjects with expectations of success. Consequently, an innovative approach in the teaching of the first degree courses is needed, moving towards adaptive and personalized learning based on the use of new technologies, facilitating the overcoming of learned competences regardless of the starting level of the student. Other works focus on adaptive learning to achieve the homogeneity in groups of students before the beginning of the group lessons. Unlike this “classical” approach, this chapter is based on maintaining the heterogeneity of knowledge and using it as a driving force to learn through interactions among group members.