An Experience Of Specific Learning Methodologies In Computer Architecture For Groups Of High Academic Performance

The incorporation of European universities to the EHEA has resulted in a common framework in which all these institutions can make shared developments. This action is part of a greater process called globalization resulting in an interconnected world. These trends set by the technological, economic and industrial development forces make the universities play a new role. Before the EHEA studies were implemented, all European universities have faced countless challenges that today are still being solved. Among the challenges one can find that students acquire teamwork skills and the practical knowledge of the English language, as both are essential for graduates of universities in the EU.Teamwork is especially important to meet properly the global market trends, where knowledge generation is increasingly performed in a group rather than as an individual task. This should be encouraged and learned from the early stages of personal learning. The different university courses should promote teamwork, designing explicit teaching activities for the group since they have many positive aspects in the process of teaching and learning.Regarding the competence of the English language, it is a cross-curricular subject in the new curriculum set by the EHEA. In fact, for example, the University of Alicante (UA) in Spain specifies the competence in a foreign language as a cross core competence, and it has been implemented in all the under graduate studies. In a practical way, this foreign language is the English language, since it is widely used worldwide and is the leading language of the international discourse. It is also one of the official languages of the EU and an essential language to communicate abroad.In this paper, the main objective is to show an experience of specific learning methodologies for high academic performance (HPC) groups in the field of computer architecture. The HPC groups were created at the universities of the Valencia region in order to strengthen the potential of the most outstanding students by offering some of the courses taught in English, besides a series of benefits for their formation. In this work, we have developed teaching materials in English regarding the teaching of courses in the HPC groups related to the computer architecture. Specifically, we show the work done for the Computer Architecture course in the Computer Engineering degree. The course is taught in English, Spanish and Valencian. We have developed new materials for practices that allow active participation and teamwork. Each of the proposed materials is designed within the methodological framework implemented in the course, related to the achievement of objectives and competencies.