Abstract:

The teaching innovation methodologies are a tool that provides a breath of fresh air to the teaching and learning processes that improves the capacity of retention of knowledge by students. However, the current situation led by the coronavirus pandemic has limited the possibilities of applying teaching innovation methodologies to the purely virtual educational environment, especially at higher education levels where universities have made the decision to teach all classes virtually. Given this scenario, the integrated implementation of two teaching innovation methodologies has been proposed in the third year of the Economics Degree of the University of Almeria: Flipped Classroom and Role Play. Specifically, students are provided with text or audiovisual documents about a specific topic before the class is held. In class, in turn, there is a debate between students in which, at random, they are given a role: for, against and indifferent. Finally, the students included in the group of indifferent were asked if they had changed their minds regarding the topic discussed in the debate. The results of the application of this integrated methodology show that the students participate much more actively in the virtual classroom environment, providing additional information to what was expected by the teachers, and some students even expressed a change of opinion regarding the topic seen in the debate. Therefore, these results facilitate the extrapolation of this experience to other courses and educational stages.

Keywords:

Role Play, Flipped Classroom, University teaching, Teaching innovation.