Abstract:

This project in education innovation pretends to apply two methodologies for the improvement of learning in the Groups of Intensification of the Study (GIS) that offers the Department of Economic Theory in the Degrees in Economy, and Business Administration (BA) of the Universitat de Barcelona (UB). The methodologies are: (1) the Flipped classroom (FC) and (2) the team based learning (TBL).

The GIS are addressed to students that retake the course. The faculty dedication is the same than in the rest of groups, 6 ECTS; however, the face-to-face educational activities are inferior: 2 weekly hours instead of 4. This structure implies both an increase of the work directed by the faculty and of the autonomous learning by the student. In practice, it represents an experience of half in-person education that was initiated in the course 2011-12 at the UB, without any satisfactory results. In this context, the main aim of this project is to incorporate the methodologies FC and TBL to incentive both the autonomous and the group work of the students, as well as to improve their academic performance.

In particular, the FC -based on the idea that the student gets in contact with the matter to study prior to the face-to-face session- allows consolidating the role of the faculty as an intermediary between the knowledge and the students. This educational methodology assigns to the students the less active tasks in order that they could be done in an autonomous way (previous reading of indicated material) and keeps the work of the face-to-face sessions for activities that require a greater participation and interaction, in addition to the direct supervision by the faculty.

Among these activities, it is necessary to include the work in groups following the methodology TBL that allows substituting the traditional teaching based in the faculty lecturers, by another type of educational experience which is centered in the students and in the process of learning in teams.

Our aim is to apply this educational strategy to the subjects that the Department of Economic Theory of the UB offers in the first course of the degrees in Economy and Business Administration: Introduction to the Economy (Degree in Economy and BA), Microeconomics (Degree in BA) and Microeconomics I (Degree in Economy). Nevertheless, during the course 2013-2014 we are carrying out a trial experiment in the two subjects of Microeconomics, whose results will be presented in the Conference.