ECONOMIC FORECASTING: LEARNING EXPERIENCES IN A SHARED VIRTUAL CAMPUS

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has provided a good opportunity of exploring new ways of teaching and learning, emphasizing the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), student mobility and university networks.
In this context, virtual campuses provide the opportunity of efficiently implement ICT and cooperative university networks. In fact, this was the aim of the G-9 Shared Virtual Campus developed in 1999 by nine Spanish public Universities.
In this paper we present our three year e-learning experiences in this virtual campus with the subject “Economic forecasting” which is included in the itinerary e-business and currently involves more than 500 students coming from nine different universities.
With the aim of providing a comprehensive view we combine teachers and learners perspectives. Thus, we describe the teaching-learning resources, mainly emphasizing the role of the free software Gretl (GNU Regression Econometrics Time Library), the communication tools and the evaluation system.
We also summarize some facts and figures, related both to academic indicators and to online surveys results. In general terms, students are satisfied with the learning experience, and they highly appreciate the most participative tools, such as forums and chats, interactive questions, self-assessments, or practical contents solved with Gretl.