Abstract:

In order for the students to follow successfully the courses of the Master Degree of Business Law and Contracts, an introductory course was designed. This specific course was aimed at covering the knowledge gaps that some students may present, which are basically a lack of legal training or a lack of knowledge of the Spanish Law. This methodological innovation has improved the results obtained by these students, even avoiding potential dropouts.

This paper aims to share teaching experience developed under the Master Degree of Business Law and Contracts (hereinafter MUDEC), teaches at Faculty of Law, in the Universitat Rovira i Virgili.

The MUDEC is an interdisciplinary university master degree that specializes in different areas of Business Law and Contracts. This means that students interested in follow the course not only come from the legal field, but also come from other disciplines in the social sciences, for example, economics, business, ... At the same time, the MUDEC also is offered to foreign students, with a good response especially among students of South American countries .

Therefore, in the first MUDEC‘s editions students were very heterogeneous, so while it is a very positive data, reveals a problem: the previous training of the students was not the same! This fact translated into a different and, too often, difficult to follow the matters of the master degree, as there are different levels between foreign students and those who had no legal training.

To solve this particular problem, the MUDEC coordination team design an introductory course to complement the previous training which would allow these to be in the same conditions and with the same level as other colleagues with legal education coursed in our country.

The good results achieved and the positive feedback from students, who have completed this course, encourages us to share the experience implemented in MUDEC, as we believe that is easily transferable to other postgraduate studies that require for being in similar situations.

The main results and conclusions are:
1. The introductory complements can be helpful to board the further study of the master's subjects, as well as for a better understanding of the tools that our university has to facilitate the study and research.
2. This experience has shown us that this good teaching practice incentives the increase of enrolled students from other disciplines, and also the number of students from the legal field because of the heterogeneity of students. This it enriches the work atmosphere and promotes the transversality of knowledge.
3. The dropout rate of students, especially students without legal training and foreigners, has dropped substantially in the latest editions of MUDEC.

We believe this is due to the introductory complements.

Keywords:

Postgraduate education, Internacionalizacion, Pre-training competences.