TEACHING STRATEGIES IN LARGE "PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS" CLASSES

Principles of Economics is nowadays taught in many Spanish Faculties to overcrowded classes of 80 or more students. The primary objective of this paper is to analyze what teaching strategies can improve students' interest in this subject and reduce their abandonment and failure indices in large groups. This is achieved through active learning, use of new technologies, team work using the Problem-Based Learning methodology, incentivising students' assistance to tutoring sessions and finally continuous assessment of their performance. Most of these teaching strategies have been being successfully implemented in different groups of the University of Castilla La-Mancha and Rey Juan Carlos University over the last four years. Moreover, these strategies are consistent with the change in teaching methodology that involves the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) where teaching becomes learner-centered and seeks to develop skills and independent learning ability of the student.