ENHANCING STUDENTS' MOTIVATION AND ACADEMIC RESULTS IN THE CONTEXT OF FINAL PROJECTS THROUGH DESIGN-THINKING METHODOLOGIES

With the introduction of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) all students in master's and bachelor's degrees must develop, before finishing the academic program, a Final Project. As time goes, these new Final Projects have turned each time more academic and got further from the job market and companies' needs. Thus, recent surveys show an incredible decrease in the students' motivation in relation to final projects, as well as some topics are totally over demanded. Besides, the number of students developing Final Projects has gone up incredibly and tutorial time has now to be divided into a much greater group of people, decreasing the tutorial quality. Therefore, to address these problems, during the second term of the year 2017/18 in the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, a pilot experience has been conducted, based on the introduction of a design-thinking methodology to develop Final Projects. Results showed the quality of the tutorial action was highly improved; and students' global motivation level was also reported to be higher.