La voz del alumnado en el (re)diseño de asignaturas para incentivar su engagement mediante un enfoque cualitativo

This research aims to present a proposal aimed at enhancing student engagement through the (re)design of subject programs from the practice of a whole series of specific activities during the first day of class of a subject, as well as through the analysis of the analysis of the opinions of the students at the end of the training program, all based on mechanisms in which the students play a prominent role. Engineering programs include, to a greater or lesser extent, concepts and topics related to the field of business management, given its relevance in the comprehensive training of the future engineer. According to numerous research works, both the specific knowledge of the business area and the acquisition of competencies and skills required in said environment are especially useful both in the process of entering the engineering work environment and in the subsequent development of their professional activity. However, some of the engineering students do not enthusiastically approach the courses and training activities designed for this purpose. Thus, all the efforts aimed at reversing this situation are relevant to improve the degree of student engagement in all subjects and, especially, in business management subjects in which specific deficits have been detected in this area. 
 
A set of conditioning factors are reflected in this study: 1) Since 2019, La Salle-Universitat Ramon Llull (URL) began the implementation and development of the model called New Learning Context (NLA), with the aim of revolutionizing and adapting the learning process of digital native students; 2) The emergence of COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) ended up generating a global pandemic in early 2020 that led to the adoption of various restrictive measures regarding personal contact and which resulted in restrictions on physical access to the educational facilities, effects that at the university degree level were initially coped in La Salle-URL through the adoption and deployment of an ERT (Emergency Remote Teaching) solution, replacing the F2F modality (Face-to-face); 3) the implementation of an SC (Smart Classroom) technology in the 2020-2021 academic year to replace the ERT solution, to enable training sessions in a remote format that offered students a learning experience as similar as possible to the face-to-face format. 
 
With the aim of increasing student engagement, a model is proposed in which, through qualitative techniques, the student's perceptions are collected, giving them a voice, and thus being able to integrate them with the teachers' perceptions and proceed to a (re)design of the subject. The experiments embodied in the research articles of this compendium thesis have focused on business management subjects within the context of engineering programs, since the need to promote engagement in these matters arises in a special way. The opinions of the students have been collected in two especially significant moments: the first day of class for a subject and, once the students have finished the subject, using User Experience (UX) techniques. Given the adoption of SC technology by the Institution, the perception of the students has been explicitly collected once they have experienced three technological deployments in three consecutive semesters, namely: F2F, ERT and SC. From the experiments carried out, it can be concluded that the proposed model reports a series of findings that can be incorporated into the (re)design of subjects to increase engagement. 
Keywords: COVID-19, Students’ Voice; College Education, Engagement; Business Management; ICT Engineering; Motivation; First Day of Class; Smart Classroom, User Experience.