project-based learning applied to social projects to ...

PROJECT-BASED LEARNING APPLIED TO SOCIAL PROJECTS TO HELP TEEN PREGNANTS AND MOTHERS AT RISK OF SOCIAL EXCLUSION María Teresa Villalba de Benito, Pedro Lara Bercial, Asunción Herreros Miguel 1,2,3 Universidad

Europea de Madrid (ESPAÑA)

Abstract The early pregnancy involves health risks of teens and child, psychological disorders, and also has social, economic and educational implications. There is evidence of the effectiveness of programs designed to minimize these negative effects by early incorporation into pregnancy monitoring programs, as well as educational and social inclusion. Universidad Europea has signed an agreement with Fundación Madrina, a NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) focused on social and psychological support for young pregnant women at risk of social exclusion. In this collaboration several initiatives are being launched. The first one is to support from the perspective of technology and education the current NGO projects. It consists of providing the basic technologies to pave the way for further common development. The final goal is to develop a comprehensive educational platform to inform and train users in the 3 identified areas: health, psychology-social work, and education-employability. In this paper we focus on the work that is now done with that NGO. How the collaboration was organized, how we have involved students through project-based learning, the results obtained, and the future work will be explained in detail.

Keywords: Innovation, project based learning.

1

INTRODUCTION

The early pregnancy involves health risks of teens and child, psychological disorders, and also has social, economic and educational implications. The most serious consequences for the teenager pregnant or mother are scholar dropouts, parental rejection, high rate of abortions and organ damage. This increases the risk of social exclusion of this population. Social factors are the main responsible, mainly the lack of resources and information or education, as well as the exclusion that cause poor nutrition, and little or no prenatal care among others. There is evidence that when proper prenatal care and social support is given, positive results are achieved for both the teen and her baby. There is also evidence of the effectiveness of programs designed to minimize these negative effects by early incorporation into pregnancy monitoring programs, as well as educational and social inclusion. The main problem of these programs is than they are in-person, and there is a need of anonymity in these situations. Moreover, while the number of births in Spain has fallen by 18.1% since 2008 (according to data from the Spanish National Institute of Statistics, 2014), the teenage pregnancy remains a public health problem. At the same time, the age of first sexual intercourse continues to drop. The current situation of economic crisis has caused the loss of resources to help this group. According to research from the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) there is evidence that teenage mothers drop out their studies before, accessed later to his first job, and not usually achieve stable employment throughout his life story. Other countries have implemented effectively inter-sectorial actions in which educators, social workers and health personnel have participated with a complementary role. As a result, doctors, psychologists, social workers and educators believe in the need to strengthen support to this population with comprehensive measures in order to improve the chances of access to better care, combating social exclusion and school failure, and improving the employability, so they can access to stable employment. Universidad Europea has signed an agreement with Fundación Madrina, a NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) focused on social and psychological support for young pregnant women at risk of social exclusion. In this collaboration several initiatives are being launched. The first one is to support from the perspective of technology and education the current NGO projects. It consists of providing the

basic technologies to pave the way for further common development. The final goal is to develop a comprehensive educational platform to inform and train users in the 3 identified areas: health, psychology-social work, and education-employability. This platform will be supervised by professionals from various aspects: obstetricians, obstetric-gynecologic nurse (midwife), psychologists, social workers, and specialized trainers. The paper is organized as follow: section 2 is about how the collaboration is been settled, section 3 talk about how students have been involved through project-based learning, the results obtained, and the future work will be explained in detail.

2 2.1

UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY COLLABORATION

Motivation

Madrina Foundation is born in 2000, being awarded the First National Solidarity Award 2003 and Marisol Torres Award in 2008. It is an independent entity of character "charity care", dedicated to the promote women’s dignity and children, mothers and motherhood, compared abuse, violence and social inequality. The Foundation is under the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of Spain, and the AECI, and NGO development. The purpose of Madrina Foundation is “ ... the promotion, support and dignity of women and childhood in general, and the mother and motherhood, in particular, preserving them against any type of difficulty, risk, abuse, violence and social inequality ...”. The mission of the Foundation is to assist and accompany women and teens, in especially those in risk and crisis situation, victims of any kind of exclusion, violence, abuse or social or occupational inequality, because of their maternity. To all of them, a personalized and supervised solution to each problem and age is offered, with special emphasis on adolescence. This support is developed through the "Mother Program" with 3 projects of care, support, hosting and training for 18 months through voluntary "godmothers". The godmother is an experienced mother who "adopt, act as guardian and audit" every young person until she can live independently with her baby. This support is provided through a multidisciplinary and specialized work, relying on professional and civil society resources, such as welfare flats, homes godmother, godmothers and grandparents’ godmother, among others. The Foundation, through its "Mother Program", has generated the social network pregnants or mothers lack of, supported by both professionals and volunteers. It also has a service of legal and psycho-social support in labor or employment problems because of maternity care. An initiative which have benefited more than 4,000 women and has handled more than 133,000 phone calls, 41,000 emails and 53,000 SMS, creating a comprehensive support service. On the other hand, Universidad Europea admits and actively involves all campuses in its commitment to social responsibility, one of the cornerstones of its educational model. Social responsibility forms part of the university community and is reflected in the following objectives: 

Educating in values throughout the learning process



Raising awareness within the community on the importance of being responsible and committed to society and the environment.

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Encouraging the whole community to take part in different social and environmental activities.

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Promoting social commitment and a sustainable use of resources in every university school and department.

Universidad Europea fosters corporate responsibility through awareness-raising and volunteering programs in Spain and abroad, fighting for human rights, carrying out literacy programs for highly vulnerable groups, and promoting alternative forms of consumption. In doing so, the importance and value of these activities is shared with students and faculty, and faculty is encouraged to include them in the degree course programs as social content through the Curricular Sustainability Program. Universidad Europea believes that these projects help build a fairer society that embraces diversity and guarantees equal opportunities for all types of disabled persons with specific needs.

That is why there are many experiences over the years, in which the University has worked with NGOs as “University for development”1, or the award young social entrepreneur2. And so, is how the collaboration with Madrina Foundation was stablished.

2.2

Project based learning

In the Engineering School of the Universidad Europea the academic model is based on Project Based Learning (PBL) methodology. A definition of PBL methodology according to Prince and Felder [1] is: “Project based learning begins with an assignment to carry out one or more tasks that lead to the production of a final product—a design, a model, a device or a computer simulation. The culmination of the project is normally a written and/or oral report summarizing the procedure used to produce the product and presenting the outcome.” Using this definition as a starting point, the Polytechnic School of Universidad Europea offers students the opportunity to learn through real projects since their first academic year. The main aim is to avoid the lack of motivation first-year students have, and in doing so, decrease the number of drop outs. After some research on methods to avoid the lack of motivation in first-year students of engineering, PBL turn out to be the most interesting model, not only because it has already worked at other universities [2], but also because it has some other advantages: -

It encourages the university-industry collaboration, and brings the students closer the real world.

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It enables a more in depth learning through the active learning techniques such as learning by doing

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It enables the development of general competences such as team working, ability to apply knowledge to practice, initiative and entrepreneurship, planning and time management, innovation-creativity, and independent learning.

Regarding the technical skills of the subject got by students, according to a survey conducted on students from Aalborg University and students from the Technical University of Denmark there is no difference between PBL and conventional teaching [1]. The advantage is that PBL helps students to link subject matter to everyday life [1]. An academic model based on PBL was defined for the whole Polytechnic School, which from that moment was renamed as Project Based Engineering School (PBES). Thus, each year several subjects of that academic year are involved in the project. Therefore there is a project per academic year and degree. In the last two academic years many projects have been developed using this methodology, and many organizations have been involved. In those years (12-13, 13-14), 62 projects, 101 subjects, 66 professors and 1342 students and 16 collaborating companies have been evolved. More details and results of some of these experiences can be found in [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. Besides the competences aforementioned, when the organization is an NGO there are other skills involved, such as ethical values and social responsibility. Both of them are included in the objetives of the University and in the degree course programs through the Curricular Sustainability Program. The mutual benefit of such alliances facilitates these projects are completed with success for all parties involved, as we will explained in detail in the next sections. The University-NGO collaboration introduces more socially responsible studies in the context of engineering education [1].

3

THE PROJECT

The second year PBES Project is a project thought to put in practice the ability of the students to collect information from customers, identify technical and functional requirements, design the architecture of the solution, design the software to develop in the different blocks and implement it.

1

http://madrid.universidadeuropea.es/vivir-ue/posts/universidad-para-el-desarrollo-consolida-su-compromiso-con-lacooperacion-internacional-y-la-justicia-social 2

http://madrid.universidadeuropea.es/vivir-ue/posts/joven-emprendedor-social-de-madrid-premiado-por-la-universidad-europea

Four subjects are involved along the whole year: Software Engineering, Object Oriented programming, Data Bases and Web programming. The first two are taken in the first term, and the others in the second and third trimester respectively. All four are 6ECTS subjects, so the expected student workload is around 150 hours each. The students are supposed to spend between 30% and 40% of the time working in the PBES Project. The project is mandatory for every student and has a weight over the final grade of 50%-60% depending on the subject. Other assessment activities are exams and problems solving.

3.1

Requirements and design

Under the new model of teaching competency-based training, a structured evaluation is done through planning and agreement of the teachers who make up the PBES for Foundation. Based on the methodology of problem-based learning, students took an active role in the implementation process with responsibility, autonomy and cooperation. The first phase of every software project is related to the definition and analysis of the problem. The result of this work is the technical and functional requirements identified and validated by the client. Those are specific competences included in the subject Software Engineering. Specifically: 

Understand what software engineering is, and its relevance.



Understanding the life cycle for software projects, distinguishing its various types.

 Learning models, techniques and technologies related to professional software development. So it was with this subject which the students started their project. As it was previously explained, the project development is between the 30 and 40% of the total of the subject. So traditional classes explaining the concepts and methodology were given to the students before and during the PBES project. The methodology in which their work would be based on was explained to the students. As a first phase, information about the client organization, Madrina Foundation, was given to the students, and they were put in touch with the contact person in the client. This person together with other workers and volunteers of NGOs (psychologists, social workers and warehouse coordinator) told in first person students the mission of the foundation, the problems of their daily work in the NGO, and their technological needs related to the management, identification and control of information. From here, a brainstorming process followed by discussions about the problems presented and their possible causes was carried out by the students with the guide of the professor. This process allowed to create commitment and empathy on students, with the aim of motivate the students and meet the requirements of the project. From here, the next step of the student work consisted in identifying the problem and adding aggregated value to the client organization. Specifically: • • • • •

The project scope was defined, The objectives to be achieved were established, The division of activities was carried out Equipment division was performed Strategic roles were defined

Once that first phase was finished, the following phase was analyzing the problem. The strategy for data collection was done following the next actions: • •

• •

Analysis of the different media used by users, Word, Excel, etc. for compressing the data required. Different techniques for extracting information were analyzed: documentation study, interviews, Joint Applications Development (JAD), prototype, brainstorming, use cases, observation and questionnaires. Interviews were conducted developing all the methodological phases: preparation, execution, completion, analysis and documentation. Students developed notes, use cases, proceedings and presentation of documents.

•

Data flows were discussed and brainstorming on existing procedures. Use cases are modeled in its first phase.

The final phases in this subject were validation of information with end users and elaboration of the documentation. Through a JAD (Joint Application Development) with the group of students, professors and end users, the process of verification of the information obtained by end users was carried out. The implementation of an application prototype was done in order to make ease and understandable to the final user the process. In this way, the information analyzed by the students could be confirmed with the real need of the organization. Many points of interest were discussed by the beneficiaries of the future application, as well as the professors involved in the PBES project. Simultaneously a meeting minute was took down with observations, that was read, corrected and approved at the end. Finally, the students developed the following documents: • Use Cases System: user management, risk management, management jobs and courses, workers, volunteers, departmental management, event management, grant management, management of flats, warehouse management , product management, stock management, email management, logistics management • Activity's diagrams

3.2

Implementation

Once the technical and functional requirements have been identified, a scheduling of the project is needed in order to organize the development works. In this case three subjects are involved: object oriented programing (OOP), data bases (DDBB) and web programming (WP). These subjects are not taken at the same time by students, and not all the students take all the three subjects, so the planning should be designed taking into account several issues: 

The functional part to be developed in every subject must be adapted to meet the learning objects of the course.

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The development methodology must be an incremental methodology in order to be sure that the students group gets in every subject a non-final product (which works properly) that could be use by the NGO as a prototype or pilot of the final one.

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The different functionality could be split on independent blocks to let the different students groups to work in parallel.

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The software architecture and design must be very well thought to ensure an easy way of integration at the end of the every subject.

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The working groups must be formed fulfilling certain rules to ensure continuity in the works during the whole process.

In order to let students work in parallel, functionality has been split in five pseudo-independent blocks: 

Users: a module in charge of managing creation, modification and delete personal data of users

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Social History: a module in charge of manage the information related with the Social History of the users like reports, applications, needs, health or social problems, etc.

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Helps: a module in charge of managing the creation, modification and delete the request or concessions for helps.

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Stock: a module in charge of managing the store of products from donations.

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Virtual Shop: a module in charge of implement the virtual shop.

In terms of the incremental products to deliver in every subject, they were distributed as follows: 

OOP: a standalone desktop application to simulate all the functionality that was expected to have in the final product. This application must let the students prove that they are able to build a good object oriented design and implement it reading and writing information from and

into text files, allowing the final user to see and modify the information using a graphical user interface. 

DDBB: complete the previous application to add information persistence modelling a set of tables to store all the information and using a data base server to access and manage it.



WP: develop a web application to be able to manage everything using a web interface and, of course, giving information persistence managing the data base designed in the previous subjects.

3.3

Evaluation

As an example, in the case of OOP the results have improved since the PBES project is been used, as it can be seen in Table 1. The evolution in the student grades is pretty good, considering that there have been an increase in the number of students who pass the subject, and a reduction in the amount of them who have not even tried it. Table 1. Students’ OOP grades

2011-2012

2012-2013

2013-2014

2014-2015

% pass

50

55

66

69

% fail

20

15

22

20

% not tried

30

30

12

11

In addition a survey about satisfaction with the experience is being conducted among the participants and we expect to be able to offer results shortly.

4

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

As noted previously, the results of the students' satisfaction survey are not available yet, but based on the grades, the students opinion (qualitative data), and the professors perception during this trimester, there are some initial conclusions to be drawn right now: -

Students perceive as positive and motivator the development of their subjects through a real project. The fact of interacting directly with the client from the elicitation requirements phase, to the presentation of the initial prototype, was very motivating for them and, as the projects' leaders have declared on the interviews, the team did an extra effort due to this motivation. This can be the main reason why the number of students' drop outs in the subjects is falling dramatically in this last two academic years since the methodology change to PBL

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Maybe the main difference with other projects used in the PBL methodology is that this kind of social project executed for and with NGOs provides the students an interaction much more human that allows them to feel useful, since they are helping people in difficult situations, and doing so contributing to the society. This creates a sense of responsibility and personal pride in the students, and helps professors to develop competences and ethical values in the curriculum.

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Specific and general competences were easily met and adapted to this kind of methodology. Specific competences of the subject are more efficiently reached and in a way much more motivated since they are learning by doing. General competences such as team work, responsibility, confidence or entrepreneurial profile are easily developed in this methodology.

As future work the development of the ethical values need to be included in the curriculum in a more formal way. This kind of projects makes easier the development of these competences encouraging the sustainability in the curriculum. But a formal definition of objectives, activities to meet them and an evaluation methodology should be stablished.

REFERENCES

[1] M. J. Prince y R. M. Felder, «Inductive Teaching and Learning Methods: Definitions, Comparisons, and Research Bases.,» Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 95, nº 2, p. 123‐138, 2006. [2] A. J. M. C. M. Neville y G. R. P. Norman, «PBL in the Undergraduate MD Program at McMaster University: Three Iterations in Three Decades,» Journal of the association of American Medical Colleges, vol. 82, nº 4, pp. 370-374, 2007. [3] V. L. P. G. M. C. Flores, «Project Based Engineering School, Una escuela conectada con un mundo profesional sostenible,» de X Jornadas Internacionales de Innovación Universitaria, Madrid, 2013. [4] J. J. Escribano Otero, «Aprendizaje Basado en Personas (ABP’): Cuando el proyecto es alguien,» de I Encuentro Universitario de Sostenibilización Curricular, Madrid, 2004. [5] J. J. E. O. M. C. G. L. María José García García, «Experiencia de aplicación de ABP al Grado de Ingeniería Informática,» de Actas de las XX JENUI, Oviedo, 2014. [6] J. J. E. O. M. J. G. María Cruz Gaya López, «Una titulación de informática utilizando proyectos integradores con PBL,» de Actas del Simposio-Taller XIX Jenui, Castellón, 2013. [7] Y. G. L. M. C. B. M. O. Blanco Archilla, «Descripción de experiencia de aprendizaje de Sistemas de Telecomunicación dentro del nuevo enfoque "Project Based Engineering School",» de X Jornadas Internacionales de Innovación Universitaria, Madrid, 2013.