PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING METHODOLOGY AS A STRATEGY TO IMPROVE TRANSVERSAL COMPETENCES

From the European Higher Education Space it’s promoted a new form of education of higher quality and effectiveness to adapt better to new demands for qualified professionals. They are working on a range of methods designed for this purpose: to improve the training of students. But not only that but also wanted the students to become more involved in school, enhancing the relations both with their peers, as with teachers and other members of the university. Similarly it is intended to increase student participation in their community and be able to understand the reality of their environment.

It aims to encourage a range of skills in the student, which in time lead him to become a better professional, but also a better citizen and a better teammate. It is promoting a range of skills that can be divided into two groups: the specific and the general or transversal. Thus we can speak of specific competences when referring to the skills related to a particular profession. And we mean transversal competences when the skills may be common to several professions and to many situations that we can find throughout our lives.

Based on the methodology of problem-based learning, we see that besides being a good way to work the specific competences of the subject, is presented as an excellent tool when it comes to enhance transversal competences. The experience presented is part of the subject market research techniques during the past academic year 2008/2009. Therefore, the final project is to develop the organization of the First Conference of Bank Marketing: Crisis, what now?, addressed to banking professionals and college students.

Thus the overall aim of this project is to provide students a variety of tools to be able to function with ease in situations where they have to face sizeable projects, which have to work together and even coordinate with other teams, and finally will have to be defended in public. We intend to foster the development of transversal competences such as:

- Teamwork: Ability to share achievements with other people and be able to organize to achieve them.
- Ability to communicate: Enhancing the exhibition, argumentation and defense of individual position before a critical audience.
- Cooperation: some competitiveness is encouraged but always in an environment of camaraderie and constructive criticism, friendly and elegant.
- Empathy: To search for which students are able to get in the situation of others to better understand their problems and thus behind its views.
- Critical Spirit: From own personal reflections and recommendations of the group, setting a common goal which is to grow all, each within its capabilities through critical reflection and continuous improvement objective. As I say, always in an atmosphere of cordiality, respect and empathy.
- Self Motivation: Having a fixed goal and each with a specific responsibility in the Conference, makes the student take the job as their own and not as an external imposition by the teacher to be an additional workload.
- Adapting to new situations: The students have to face a new problem of some magnitude, the problem evolves throughout the stages and is also necessary to adjust the objectives and strategies.
- Concern for quality: Because the final result is going to have exposed in a professional environment makes students are especially concerned about the quality of the final result, with the intention of doing his best on the Conference.