Educational Tools and Interventional Analysis of Meaningful Learning: Case Studies Applied to Teaching Acoustic Physics in the Discipline of Environmental Comfort

It is of fundamental importance the mastery of Physics contents for the understanding of Acoustic Comfort. In this sense, it is up to the teacher to become aware of students’ prior knowledge, to give a new meaning to the cognitive structures that make it possible to transform their difficulties into learning potential. In this work, educational teaching/learning interventions were developed and focused on the Theory of Meaningful Learning. These case studies were carried out with several students in different classes in the same program. In addition to the pre- and post-intervention questionnaire, Computational Educational Tools were used in order to assess the previous concepts and the effectiveness and efficiency of the provided pedagogical intervention. Satisfactory results were obtained with a reduction of about 250% in terms of alternative conceptions to the scientific knowledge previously detected in the participating volunteer students. The analysis was based on the approach of Ausubel and collaborators’ Meaningful Learning theories, contextualized to the content of Acoustic Physics and applied in the classes of the Environmental Comfort course in the Civil Engineering and Civil Construction Technology programs from 2012 to 2018.