Abstract:

Students enrolled in the course of "Economics of the Public Sector", taught in first year in Management and Public Administration Degree of the University of Cadiz, are characterized by showing two very different profiles. On the one hand, we find ourselves with a student body that comes directly from High School and others who are civil servants seeking graduation to promote themselves professionally.

The first, show a high degree of demotivation and little involvement with studies, quite contrary to the second group.

This disparity in the profile of the students makes classes more difficult to teach for the teacher and is clearly reflected in the percentage of pupils failed, almost 40%, and a high percentage of students that didn’t attend the final exam last year (2010/11).

In order to improve the first impression that the student has of the subject, with this innovation teaching project which is being realized in the current course (2011/2012), we try to improve group cohesion, the self-study of the student and their orientation in the way subjects work of this profile, it consists of the implementation of various activities based on ICTs (via the virtual campus- Moodle platform) that employ collaborative work tools such as: Webquest, HotPotatoes, LAMS, glossaries, etc.

It is intended to make the subject more dynamic, with current and interesting content for students, eliminating group differentiation that exists between students whose weaknesses have been detected in this respect based on past experiences and aim to minimize the index of "failures" caused by the fact that the student does not know how to deal with his study of the subject in question.

The end result will be evaluated with a questionnaire and through students own ratings on the previous academic year. However, we have already obtained some initial results in exploration terms, suggesting the improvement both in the process of self-education of the student, and other skills and abilities such as teamwork, improving communication intra and inter group, etc.

In short, although the final results of this pilot study will not be available until end of the current academic year, everything seems to indicate the success of the implementation of new technologies to the learning process of the student in this subject.

Keywords:

e-learning, virtual campus, ICT’s, self-study.