Abstract:

This paper presents the results of a teaching experience developed during the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 courses, designed to work on a basic skill for the teaching-learning process in social sciences: the use of bibliographic documentation. This project starts from two acknowledged needs in this field. First, the coordination between teachers of the different courses in the degree in a controversial subject, which includes different traditions and rules. Second, the incorporation to the curriculum of those skills students are supposed to have but are never explicitly included in the syllabus. The project included three lines of work. One focused on the citation and referencing of texts in the students’ dissertations. Another about searching data on bibliographic catalogues and databases. And a third on the use of those data in research projects, especially concerning the basic skills such as summarize or extract the main ideas from a text.
Step by step during the development of the project, the application of measurement and collective reflection instruments has revealed the actual situation in its complexity. We have detected some deficiencies and some pending issues to reach an adequate academic and intellectual formation of our students. The elaboration and application of a questionnaire has allowed us to check the starting point and the improvements of the students as a result of the formative workshops and the activities included in the project. So it is both a diagnosis tool and a evaluation device. This paper contents the main results of the project, taking as the baseline the results from the questionnaire prior and after the formative workshops. Our analysis of the results shows some initial weaknesses and a partial success of the activities. Only through a constant, continuous, sequenced and systematic formation will we accomplish our goals in this issue.

Keywords:

bibliography, sociology, basic intellectual skills, learning of investigation