QUANTITATIVE SUBJECTS IN MASTER STUDIES: DETECTION OF WEAKNESSES AND PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

The foreseeable implementation of the 3+2 plans, that is 3 degree level plus 2 master level academic years, in our universities should not be done without previously analysing the strengths and weaknesses of the current degrees’ syllabus.

With respect to this, some significant differences among the students’ profiles have been noticed in the Master in Quality Management offered by the Universidad de Valencia, which received a positive accreditation in the current year. This heterogeneity was present during the last years and had a greater impact in quantitative subjects such as “Statistical Quality Control”.

Up until the current academic year, two different approaches to deal with this problem were either conducting levelling seminars or including in the subject, as a first thematic unit, the basic concepts needed by all students to even their level as much as possible. Due to some initial reticence on the students’ side, however, in the last year a new approach was taken by using an electronic polling system. This made possible for some students to be conscious of their own lack of knowledge in certain areas in the very first session, as well as getting immediate feedback for both student an teacher in the next sessions, thus allowing the detection in the spot of weaknesses that should be strengthened and the proposal of different exercises to achieve this.

Observed results seem to be very positive, since not only was a greater homogeneity in students’ knowledge achieved, but a noticeable increase of almost one point with respect to previous years was also reflected in their grades.