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and transmedia communication, with features of non-lineality and interactivity. It is also necessary that they are able to manage multiple screens and languages for users who are protagonists and immersed in the very communicative processes.

Facing this scenario of digital convergence and aiming at training these professionals, project-based learning as a method turns out useful in teaching digital communication due to the characteristics it shows in the teaching process.

The research looks into PBL as a method of teaching and learning, since it allows for a skill-based training. Also, it gives students great satisfaction and improves the possibility of “learning to learn” from the exercise of self-directed learning, alongside the inherent needs and skills of a digital communicator for his or her professional success.

1.1. Self-Learning

We can refer to self-learning as self-regulated learning or self-directed learning. We can also find a set of analogous or similar terms which refer to the same concept, such as self-planning, self-education, self-teaching, autonomous learning, autodidacticism, independent study, and open learning.

As some variants to name the same concept are observed, we may also find different approaches, as those observed by Aceves (2008: 24), who details different approaches as:

Personality trait (Guglielmino, 1977; Long, 1989, 1990 and 1991; Brockett y Hiemstra, 1991; Candy, 1991; Hiemstra 1988), instructional method (Brockett and Hiemstra, 1991, 1994; Candy, 1991; Cranton, 1994; Pilling-Cormick, 1995), self-administration of education and autodidactisist capacity (Candy, 1991).

Self-directedness of learning is understood to be both a theoretical and practical concept related as such to many other concepts as, for instance, to those by Knowles (1975) and his lifelong learning apprentice model.

The most recurrent definition in the literature points out that self-directedness of learning is a process in which the individuals take the initiative, with or without others’ help, in order to diagnose their learning needs, set their learning goals, identify material and human resources to learn, select and implement the appropriate learning strategies to test the learning results (Aceves, 2008: 24).

Another possibility to be able to define self-regulation is recurring to what is stated by Valle, Rodriguez, Núñez, Cabanach, González and Rosario (2010: 87-88) who claim that it is “an active and constructive process where the subject establishes a set of goals and attempts to plan, supervise, control, and regulate their cognition, motivation, and behaviour, always taking into account the contextual characteristics of their environments.”

Likewise, as Pozo and Monereo point out (2002: 11), “If we had to choose a motto, a mantra, which would guide the goals and purposes of the 21st century school, the most accepted one [...] among educators and researchers [...] would certainly be that education should be aimed at helping students learn to learn.” In this way, Núñez, Solano, González and Rosario (2006: 140) start to focus on the matter, to advance into one of the main lines of Psychology in current education: learning self-regulation, about which they state that “The construct of self-regulated learning relates to ways of independent and effective academic learning which imply metacognition, intrinsic motivation, and strategic action [...] and is defined as