EPORTFOLIOS OR CASE OF STUDY? REFLEXIONS FROM A LEARNING EXPERIENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Higher Education must be linked with a real and professional world, specially at the end of the formative process of the students. This paper shows the experience in the Master's Degree in Teaching Training (Master de Formacio del Professorat) at the University of Balearic Islands; on the Interaction and Co-Existence in the Classroom subject (generic subject). This Master's Degree offers the possibility to work as future teacher of schools from different stages like ESO (secondary education); Batxillerat (high education) and Cicles Formatius (professional training) and the aim of the subject is to provide educational tools, teaching strategies and effective methodologies in order to give to students a package of learning resources to improve de co-existence levels and to manage principal conflicts that could be appear in their classrooms or even in their workplace. To develop this aim, the subject has four blocks of contents, which are distributed in 75h hours (only 10 hours were face-to-face); so in this face-to-face sessions, we work on educational and co-existence laws, strategies to solving conflict, negotiation, mediation programs, bullying and cyberbullying violence, dating violence, mobbing and also burnout. The other sessions are virtual, so the students have a virtual classroom (Moodle platform from Campus UIB), were they are provided of the contents, recommended readings, links; also, this virtual classroom provides a space to coordinate and to communicate with other partners and also with teacher. Students are evaluated in three ways: individual work (ePortfolio or Case of Stuty), grupal work and participation. This communication focuses on the individual work. 75 students participated divided in three groups: a) German and English degree's, as English Philology degree (27 students); Spanish and Catalan degree's, as Spanish Philology degree (36 students) and Educational Guidance, as Pedagogy or Psychology degree (12 students). Every student could choose between ePortfolio or Case of Study for their individual work. 100% of the students of Educational Guidance choose Case of Study but in the other two groups, most members choose ePortfolio. This paper shows principal reasons for their election, the process of the learning experience through the 10h face-to-face sessions, how partners and teacher provide support by the virtual classroom and the principal learning (bases on their qualification and also their comments through a anonymous questionnaire). Finally we include some reflexions about their principal difficulties in order to improve this innovation practices in higher education.