Abstract:

This paper presents the results of a pedagogical innovation project in the MSc in Actuarial Science at the University of Málaga (Spain) carried out during the last two years. The main objective of the project was getting a better contextualisation of the courses, form a transversal perspective, bringing to the students a holistic approach to the actuarial profession. Thus, we designed pedagogical activities to be done simultaneously within groups of courses. The combination of courses was carefully chosen, looking for complementary competences and contents, in order to achieve a comprehensive perception of the actuarial profession by our students. Cooperative learning, by means of collaborative assignments, was the chosen method for all the activities, as this transversal competence is included in the syllabus of the MSc. Collaborative working and social skills were encouraged during the development of the activities, and students explicitly knew that these competences were to be assessed. Some assessment tools have been specifically designed for this purpose, including peer-to-peer evaluation using a survey. Another transversal competence with a major role in the project was the oral communication competence, which has an increasing importance in the professional development of actuaries. The last stage of each proposed activity incorporated an oral presentation of the results. These presentations were assessed by lecturers of different courses as well as by students, trying to emulate the scenario of a diverse audience. Finally, the results of a survey conducted at the end of the participant courses, which are analysed in this paper, revealed that our students achieved a wide and contextualised perspective of the competences and contents comprised in the project along with a high level of satisfaction with the activities and methods used.

Keywords:

Skills, transversality, cooperative learning.