Preferences for Teaching Materials: A Survey on a Multimodal World

In an age of mass teaching, student-teacher contact time is not always enough to ensure an effective teaching-learning process. For the assimilation of concepts it is necessary that, outside the classroom, without the presence and support of the teacher, the student uses materials that allow to remember and eventually complement the learning during the class and simultaneously facilitate and guide, leading to the achievement of the defined objectives. As technology evolves, study materials and support platforms are increasingly diverse and it is important for the teacher to know which means students use and their motivations. A survey was conducted with a group of students from an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from a Portuguese higher education institution in order to understand their study habits and the materials they use when out of the classroom. From the analysis of the answers it was possible to infer that the students show preference for studying in a family environment, alone and using as materials the class notes provided by the teachers. Despite the growing use of videos and other multimodal media, the written, personalized notes and orientations set by the teacher are still the most preferred.