Improving Motivation in Learning Programming Skills for Engineering Students

Engineering degree students sometimes feel that programming courses are not particularly relevant to their main subject and consequently are unmotivated and underperform. In view of this fact therefore, we have realized that in order to motivate them, programming practices must be related to other areas of their degree, in accordance with some principles of the EHEA (European Higher Education Area) process currently being implanted in European universities. This paper presents the work done over a ten year period in which we have tried to motivate the participation of the students studying Telecommunications Engineering in the University of Malaga during their studies. Conceptual maps produced as the result of a coordinated process between several professors in the different areas of the syllabus were used to design the practices and as a result the student success rate has improved while absenteeism has dropped.