Abstract:

Over the last two academic years we have implemented the methodology of group work in a compulsory subject of the Faculty of Law at the Pablo de Olavide University (Seville, Spain). The main aim was to improve the acquisition of skills and qualifications obtained by students enrolled in the course "Quantitative Methods applied to Social Sciences" in the 2nd. year of the Degree in Political Science and Public Administration. This course is a quantitative-type subject and for that reason students enrolled in a degree corresponding to the field of social sciences a priori feel a certain rejection concerning it. This is translated into a high drop-out rate of the subject almost from the beginning of the academic year, and we wish to avoid this by implementing different models of teaching and learning.

It must be said that the course was taught for the first time in the 2010-11 academic year and in that year, although the competence of teamwork was included as one of the interpersonal skills to be worked on in the Degree, the Module and the subject, teachers did not suggest that the students carry out a specific work.

In the 2011-12 academic year, students had the possibility of working in groups, not directed and without rubric, in which students collected the data, posed and solved a real problem, which was corrected by the teacher.

In the 2012-13 academic year, the teamwork was directed from the beginning by the teachers, who provided the data and the problem to be solved, and had a rubric. In this case the students, in addition to working out teamwork, had to correct the work of another team on a different lesson. In this way, we could get each student to work in depth on two of the six lessons that make up the themes of the subject.
Comparing the grades obtained in these three academic years will allow us to assess the greater or lesser success of the competence of the working group. We will also consider the comments about the experience put into practice by studying the views of students, expressed through a brief questionnaire on the teamwork carried out.

Keywords:

Teamwork, quantitative subject, rubric.