New Perspectives in Science Education

The universalization of World Wide Web (WWW) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has fostered a great development of on-line and distance-learning courses, and a fast growth in the number of students enrolled in such programs. Besides, on-line and distance-learning programs have been able to overcome a number of handicaps that face-to-face programs have, mostly due to great flexibility that on-line programs offer to students regardless of their location and/or time availability. As a drawback, students enrolled in on-line and distance-learning programs might feel isolation and lack of motivation. In order to overcome these problems, this research aims to study how active-learning teaching strategies influence the students’ study approaches, their motivation and strategy to learn environmental science in a distance-learning program along with the Revised Two – Factor Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F) employed. The study was carried out in the National University of Distance Education of Spain in the Environmental Science undergraduate program during the 2017/18 course. The results of the study indicate that the active-learning methodology implemented in the course helped the students to reach a deep approach to the learning, their motivation to the course and to achieve better learning outcomes.

Keywords: environmental science; active-learning; distance-learning; motivation;