This work presents and analyses the change in the teaching methodology in the subject “Inorganic Chemistry” from the 2nd year of the Chemical Engineering, Science Faculty, in the University of Alicante.
This change has been motivated, on one hand, by the need of adapting the teaching methodology to the new ECTS credits and, on the other hand, in order to promote the students’ active participation in the development of the subject and increase their interest on it. Regarding the latter, the great difficulty of the subject, partly from its basically descriptive character, forces the teaching method to be performed mostly through master classes.
Changes made in order to evaluate the non-presential work have been based on the approach of sheets of each lesson that the student must complete and submit via web before the starting of the lesson. In order to work the concepts taught in the master class, a collection of questions and exercises was handed to allow students to further work the subject outside the classroom. In order to encourage its realization, one third of the questions of the exam would be selected from these questions and exercises.
A fact observed with increasing frequency is the low proportion of students in class during lectures. This is motivated by two reasons: the number of non-presential tasks and the fact that class attendance is not taken into account in the final score of the subject. Thus, some evaluation criteria to mark the class attendance were established.

One of the most positive results was the noticeable increase in the class attendance, from 20 to 60% of the students attending the lessons. This emphasises the benefits of the clear evaluation criteria establishment.

Regarding the students’ participation, the preparation and submission of sheets was positive. Very good response was observed during the first third of the subject (70% of the students were preparing the sheets). However, some decrease in the participation was observed towards the end of the course, leading to participation of 30% of the students.

Some of the students were organized in carrying out the questions and exercises, distributing its realization and sharing them, which was not expected.

The results of the present study suggest that when the evaluation criteria are clear for the students, they focus their efforts and dedication towards accomplishing them.