Abstract:

Since the start of the Bologna Process and the implementation of the new degrees in the Spanish University, people are working in the design of cross curricular activities, which may help in facilitating a continuouos assessment of students achievement, while avoiding overlapping of homework and excess work load.

Along this process of complex changes, teachers have made an important effort in developing activities that allow him/her to judge the amount of knowledge and the adquisition of skills by students during his/her training process. There is a dual challenge. On the one hand, new activities have to be developed that allow students to acquire the necessary specific and generic abilities. On the other hand, the results obtained during the learning process have to be evaluated. This is the aim, we put forward a practical lesson to be carried out in the second semester of the first year of the Economics Degree. The Departments involved are: Economic Analysis, Mathematics for Economists and Applied Economics (Area of Quantitative Methods for Economists).

The proposed activity deals with obtaining the solution of an input-output model à la Leontief. Students’ work consists in obtaining the value of output for each economic activity branch. To do so, they have to use the intermediate consumption table from the aggregated input-output table (aggregated at R17 sectors, according to NACE-Rev. 1). In solving the proposed task, students need to employ knowledge of linear algebra, descripitive statistics and economic theory acquired previously. In addition to being able to evaluate this previous knowlege, the practical activity intends to assess the acquisition of specific abilities in quantitative subjects, abilities of the first level of economics together the skills of team work, summarising and oral presentation.

In practical terms the activity is be done in teams of two students in the classroom. These groups of students will present their work indistinctly in the lessons of Mathematics I, Statistics I and Macro I. However, the evaluation of the oral presentation and of the written exercise will be done jointly by the three teachers involved in the activity.