IMPROVING INTERDISCIPLINARY COMPETENCES DEVELOPMENT WITH COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS. A STUDY CASE IN FINANCE AND ACTUARIAL SCIENCE

Competences required in the field of Finance and Actuarial Sciences are getting more and more complex, diverse and interrelated. This fact constitutes a challenge for Higher Education instructors with a traditionally high degree of specialization, which is usually translated into fragmented curricular designs with scarce communication between courses. Trying to overcome this situation, we carried out a project at the Universidad de Málaga, in the fields of Finance and Actuarial Science, based on the development of collaborative projects involving pairs of courses. Students enrolled in any of these courses were required to develop during one term a collaborative project using the contents and competences of two courses. These competences are included, directly or indirectly, in the core syllabus for actuarial training of the Actuarial Association of Europe and the corresponding one of the International Actuarial Association.

The aim of our project is enriching the learning process and its outcomes by means of:
(i) developing competences and contents of different courses in an interconnected manner and
(ii) encouraging the acquisition of transversal competences, like oral skills and collaborative working, within a context closer to the real professional environment.

For the former, lecturers of the courses chose hot topics that could be approached or allow interpretation form any of the involved courses. These topics only include a descriptive title and a question, thus allowing students to be creative and innovative, two aspects that were explicitly rewarded. However, to prevent a possible sensation of lack of guidance, a concept map was compulsory at mid-term and feedback was given. For the latter, students were required to present their final results in a role-play simulating a conference press. They were allowed to use any kind of additional materials, like brochures, posters, etc. The results of this experience have been highly satisfactory from both the perspective of the lecturers involved in the project and the students’ opinions, collected in a survey at the end of the term.