WORRIED ABOUT THE FACT THAT STUDENTS DO NOT REMEMBER THE MOST IMPORTANT CONCEPTS OF LAW DEGREE: AN EXPERIENCE IN ORDER TO IMPROVE THE TRADITIONAL LEARNING-TEACHING METHOD

I. Our topic in the scope of EDULEARN 2011: The authors -all lectures of Law- present this paper to EDULEARN 2011 in order to share with all its participants an experience that has carried out the courses 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 with Law students. Specifically, the authors want to show the attendants of the Conference a communication that includes three main topics:
->Experiences in Education: all the authors teach law in the fourth course of law degree. Certainly, each of them teaches a different subject of this course (labour law, tax law, procedure law,…). They have been very worried for several years because they think that pupils do not know essential elements of Law previously studied in other subjects. In order to cover these gaps or lapses every teacher has been doing what he could: lessons of revision, zero lesson, interruption of the syllabus to expose matters previously explained in other subjects,… After speaking and sharing experiences, they thought it was time to know why students do not remember essential elements of their career. That is the reason why in 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 school years the ones who write these lines have carried out a pedagogical experience.
->Transferring skills and disciplines: the authors are sure that they transfer skills and knowledge to their students. That is the aim. They want to train jurists. But at the same time they know they are doing something wrong because students forget very soon what they study. What is inadequate in the teaching-learning process? Authors have made an experience to try to know it.
->European Higher Education Area: University in general and European university especially is living an important moment. A lot of changes are being made. Undoubtedly, it is a good moment to know the causes of the traditional teaching and learning system failure and to try to overcome them. That is why the pedagogical experience we are explaining has achieved economical help of the Educational Advice Service of Quality and Education Innovation Vice-chancellor of the University of the Basque Country.

II. Aims of the experience of educational innovation: The experience we want to share with all people attending the conference had a main target: the cooperative analysis of cognitive skills and knowledge needed to improve the teaching-learning process of fourth course law students. More especially the experience wanted to: (1) determine the knowledge students have to have in order to develop the skills established for the subjects of fourth course of Law; (2) make a systematic and cooperative analysis of students level in mentioned students cognitive skills and knowledge in order to identify possible shortcomings and their causes, and (3) preparation of a final report with the findings and conclusions of the intervention.

III. Schedule of the experience: The six activities that have integrated the intervention project will be explained in the paper: (1) Determination of minimal necessary knowledge of the subjects of fourth course of Law and linking them with subjects studied before; (2) Identify specific and common elements or previous knowledge for all the subjects of fourth course of Law degree; (3) Checking with lectures of subjects previously studied (personal interviews with teachers); (4) Verification of the matter with pupils (surveys); (5) Reflection on the causes of the problem and offers of solution; and (6) last report and conclusions