Abstract:

This teaching experience is an extension of a previous one entitled “Acquisition of skills in the access and use of material and online resources available in the library of the UCA and its application to the teaching methodology of Economic Theory”. Originally, this experience was implemented in the degrees regulated by the former syllabus. In this further stage, we extend the initiative to the students of the new degrees adapted to the EHES “Business and Administration” and “Finance and Accountancy” in the Faculty of Economics of the University of Cadiz (UCA). It has been developed within the European Project at the UCA. It is included in the Strategic Plan of the University of Cadiz, as a project of University Educative Innovation for the Teaching and Researching Staff (2009) aimed to facilitate the process of convergence to the EHES.

This project has been implemented by a teaching group of the “Department of General Economy of the University of Cadiz”, which belongs to the knowledge area of “Applied Economy”. The aim of this experience is to provide complementary training through the acquisition of cross skills in this area as well as enhancing the use of information technology (IT) in teaching tasks. This initiative has emerged because students who enrol in the university for the first time have no knowledge about either the resources, both material and electronic, available in the Library of the UCA or how to use them. Therefore, it is worthwhile to link the learning of a first-year compulsory subject to the acquisition of complementary skills such as knowledge about the Library and its resources, search of documents and scientific information, use of new technologies in the search and exploitation of databases, professional elaboration and presentation of research works, etc.

The project is implemented in three steps:
- First step: Develop the seminar “la biblioteca amiga”, which is coordinated by the Library Assistant Director and taught by a Library Technician. This seminar is organised around two main questions: first, how to use electronic resources, focusing on online databases; and second, how to produce a research work or essay, including citations and bibliographic references accurately.
- Second step: Seminar aimed to training students in the production of the specific research work required by the subject. This seminar is taught by the teaching and researching staff.
- Third step: Production of the research work. To this purpose, students need to exploit an online database.

In order to perform this project, we have relied on the collaboration of the library staff, specifically the Library Assistant Director and a Library Technician, who are in charge of organising and teaching the seminars “La biblioteca amiga”. Also, IT resources offered by the Library have been available, including online databases and computers, both desktop computers and laptops.

Keywords:

IT and teaching of Economics, Cross skills.