Multidisciplinary Higher Education Strategies in Small Groups of Health and Social Sciences

Abstract

The Small Group Learning (SGL) permeates throughout higher education fields of study. Thus, our aim is to assess the influence of a planned activity of SGL on a variety of competences appraisals through a multidisciplinary perspective. To that end, cooperative learning activities implemented under the SGL approach were programmed for six different degrees. For each activity, students were provided with instructions about what the activity was about and how to make it. Two surveys were scheduled before and after the completion of the SGL. Our findings are presented in a descriptive and quantitative analysis, using surveys with which we examine the pre and post differences in students’ self-reports. As a result, self-perceptions on oral and written expression and bibliography competence increased after the practice of the Small Group Learning (SGL) strategy in students from Social Science degrees as well as in students from Psychology degree. In addition, receiving feedback showed an improvement for the whole sample after doing SGL. Our results confirm that, in order to achieve an excellent quality education, SGL could be applied equally in different fields of study: both Health and Social Sciences. The novelty of this study is that it has been conducted in six different academic degrees and has focused on higher education skills in order to improve future undergraduate’s employability.