Innovar y transformar desde las disciplinas: experiencias claves en la educación superior en América Latina y el Caribe 2021-2022

2 Evaluable Activities. Knowledge assessment is a necessity to ensure proper learning. In earlier times, the course approach was focused on evaluating the development of exercises along with their mathematical complexity. The use of exercises in homework or exams are good to reinforce knowledge, but they do not really guarantee a correct understanding of electromagnetism topics. For this reason, different activities have been implemented that addresses the students' comprehension of the concepts of the course. In the first instance, one of the most recent and useful resources for learning are the different simulation tools. The advance of technology makes it possible to pre- sent complex concepts graphically, which are difficult to understand only through the- oretical explanations. To enforce the use of these tools, activities are carried out using the MATLAB simulation program for the development of exercises and to observe the results graphically. This allows the student to understand both the mathematical proce- dure an d the graphical behavior (Roussel & Hélier, 2012). Other activities can be fo- rums or open - ended questions. The forum seeks communication among students, as they research either applications, simulation tools or even easy - to - understand material; and proceed to expose it to other classmates. This activity is intended to stimulate in- terest in the course topics. Open - ended questions, on the other hand, can be used to measure the students' level of understanding of specific topics of the subject. They serve as a good indicator of how students perceive the subject topics and how clearly they handle the concepts. Last but not least, laboratory practices. It is beneficial for students to directly visualize the behavior of different electromagnetism concepts in the labora- tory. The associated activity is to make a report on how what was seen in the laboratory is related with what was studied in the theory. The practice should be designated to expose how the equipment works in the laboratory and proceed, step by step, in its execution. Both to encourage student interest and to ensure a better understanding of the concepts (Sevgi, 2008). 5 Conclusions This work presented several teaching strategies implemented in the Electromagnetism I course at the School of Electrical Engineering, Universidad de Costa Rica. An end - of - semester survey showed that students prefer a combination of asynchronous and synchronous lessons. Asynchrony provides concise lectures and schedule flexibility, while synchrony allows live discussion of complex concepts and exercises. Active learning via simulations allowed students to visualize abstract concepts. Among other strategies, simulations were ranked the highest in terms of usefulness to students. This was followed by guest lectures that promoted the discussion of “ real world ” applications of electromagnetism concepts. The findings suggest that the challenges that students struggle the most are the ab- stract nature of class concepts, and the perceived disconnection between theory and its applications in professional practice. Thus, tackling these challenges can considerably improve the student experience throughout the course. 48