A teaching experience in Economy compared during several academic courses

Resumen

Throughout this work, the comparison of the results of several teaching innovation projects is shown, being applied to the first year of the Degree in Public Administration and Management (GAP) in the module “Public Sector Economics”, taught at the University of Cadiz. Although different from each other, the projects have as a common objective the improvement of students' qualifications in this area as well as the reduction of the number of fails in it. The projects do not involve the use of a traditional method of teaching in a non-traditional environment, but a modification of the educational approach using the virtual classroom as a central resource or axis around a process of systematization, formalization, monitoring and evaluation of the student-user in higher education. In a brief analysis of this matter, it can be said that it is composed of students from two different profiles: Directly from the Baccalaureate level, or already civil servants who seek to qualify for promotion purposes. The first ones are generally unmotivated and poorly involved, quite the opposite of the latter. This diversity makes the classes more difficult for the teacher depending on the group which is faced and this is showed in almost 40% of fails or not taken in year 2010/11, a course in which these series of compared projects are initiated. As a main conclusion, it is obtained that, beyond the current project, each course is made up of completely different students, some of them more inclined to the project, with a greater involvement and, therefore, better results, and others more unrelated in which this project does not say much. Therefore, the profile of the students is fundamental for the success of the projects and it means that the comparison between courses is conditioned by the high degree of subjectivity which entails the composition of the group in terms of the student profile.