Abstract:

The Final Degree Project (FDP) in the Degree in Economics is an additional subject. It is also a tool to comprehensively evaluate student learning, both in knowledge and in the different skills to practice the profession.

The reality shows that many students have considerable difficulties in facing the realization of the FDP, as they do not always have these skills sufficiently developed.

The public economics department offers three independent but complementary courses. Public Finance (expenditure policies) is completed in the second semester of the 2nd year; Tax System is taught in the first semester of the third year; finally, Regional and Local Finance is also taught in the third year but in the second semester. This three-semester period is a great opportunity to supervise students and encourage critical thinking and creativity in their learning, habits that require dedication and constant work.

The overall objectives of the project are:
1. Promote and evaluate critical thinking in the classroom.
2. To work in a coordinated manner between the three subjects in the public sector, so that students can work on critical thinking in steps every semester.
3. To promote the work as a teaching team of the three subjects, both in content of the subjects and in the development of critical thinking, taking advantage of the fact that they are the same students.
4. To encourage the future realization of the FDP and especially the choice of the subject to be a creative and reflective process that is trained from the second year to achieve a more conscious and motivating choice by the student.

To achieve these goals, the following actions are proposed:
1. Think through inquiry.
2. Critical thinking through writing.
3. Critical thinking through group collaboration.
4. Analyse current news from various media to contrast points of view and approaches.
5. Establish debates on current issues and interest for students, to promote active listening and respect for opinions other than their own.
6. To generate possible future topics of FDP, which will feed a Register of innovative ideas in the Learning Management System of the different subjects, ideas that will be expanded and / or improved.

All this also means specific actions by the teachers involved. In this sense, it should be noted that, in order to achieve good critical learning, the teaching staff of the subjects will carry out the following actions:
1) Promote reflection with open questions and make students question the content.
2) Create a motivating environment, awakening interest and curiosity, while fostering creativity and imagination.
3) Lead students towards their own learning, favouring their autonomy, acting as guides towards the construction of their own knowledge.

To assess the results, we will use students’ responses to activities that promote critical thinking to assess whether they are effectively achieving the planned objectives. We believe that it is important to establish clear criteria to evaluate critical thinking, since it helps both students and teachers to know the objective they are working towards. An effective criterion measures which skills are present, to what extent, and which skills require further development.

Keywords:

Teaching methodologies, teaching innovation, creativity, critical thinking.