Abstract:

This work aims to show the main points of a project of teaching innovation in higher education at the University of Almeria in the 2018/2019 academic year. The field of application is the subject of Economics of the European Union, corresponding to the third year of the degree in Economics. The classes focus on a theoretical part with ten chapters that are reflected in the teaching guide and a practical part. It begins with the trade relations between countries and their integration processes (chapter 1), in which economic and financial globalization plays a fundamental role with the concentration of countries in economic blocs. Chapter 2 focuses on the historical evolution of European integration, highlighting the role of France and Germany in this process. The institutional framework is a fundamental issue in it and therefore there is a specific chapter on it (Chapter 3). Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the history and characteristics of the single European market, analysing the four basic freedoms (goods, services, capital, people and workers) and the creation of a common currency as the culmination of the process. The next chapter focuses on financing, one of the major issues for the European Union as it has no taxes of its own. This is why both the budget and the multiannual financial framework 2014-2020 (Chapter 6) are analysed. The last four chapters deal with the policies of the European Union in four main blocks: Common Agricultural Policy, Cohesion Policy, Foreign Policy and other internal policies.

Innovation focuses on teaching through the application of new teaching techniques:
• Concept maps, which allow students to rank the main elements of a given issue in order to draw informed and consistent conclusions.
• Development of wikis to encourage a collaborative environment of autonomous research of students under the careful supervision of teachers.
• Role-playing games, in which the students acquire the point of view of the main actors of the European Union while acting as teachers of the rest of the students.
• Time lines, with which to provide students with a tool that enables them to order events chronologically, helping them to detect relationships causes effects that explain the current situation.
• Flipped classroom, which will open in-depth debates on current issues in which students will have to work on a critical attitude using their knowledge of the EU.
• Kahoot, an online questionnaire creation tool with which students learn while competing. The need to have the students' mobile phones will open lines of research that will address the advantages of these in the educational environment.

The subject of Economics in the European Union is the subject of the degree in Economics which has the highest number of Erasmus students. Therefore, the application of innovative teaching techniques will demonstrate their efficiency and effectiveness in students with a wide range of educational backgrounds, thus opening up the opportunity to extrapolate the experience to other territories.

Keywords:

Teaching Innovation, Economics of the European Union, Knowledge, Flipped classroom.