Bilingual teaching at CEIA3 universities: student's perceptions on teaching methodologies

Abstract

The spread of bilingual programs has become a mainstream in European and Spanish universities in the last decade. This trend is motivated by the guidelines of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) to promote the acquisition and use of more than one foreign language. Within this context, a strong concern on the teaching methods used in university classrooms to convey academic contents through a foreign language has arisen. Despite the recent development of studies on evaluation of bilingual programs in higher education, few studies have focused on the teaching methodologies used in these contexts from a student perspective. This study examines the students' perceptions on the teaching methodologies used in bilingual courses at ceiA3 universities - a consortium composed by the universities of Almeria, Cordoba, Jaen, Cadiz and Huelva. For this purpose, an online questionnaire was submitted to students participating in such bilingual programs. Results show that the teaching methodologies with a higher satisfaction rate are master class and, especially, teamwork, while the latter is perceived by the students as the most difficult.