Methods
3.1. Context, objectives and justification
Spanish Economy is a basic course for Business students at the University of Huelva. It is offered during the second semester of the second year and, together with World Economy, makes up a teaching block that focus on the economic context where enterprises perform their activity. The contents of the course are predominantly theoretical and descriptive and the traditional teaching methodology has been the master class, complemented with practical activities like texts and graphs analysis.
The revision of the teaching methodology is justified by two principal reasons. Firstly, the traditional methodology did not fit the requirements of the EHEA, since the student was considered to be a mere information recipient, playing only a passive role in the learning process. Secondly, the teachers observed a low rate of class attendance which was interpreted as an evidence of lack of motivation and satisfaction between the students.
Due to these reasons, the teachers of the course decided to develop a new teaching
methodology conducting to reach the following objectives:
1. Improving the students’ experience in class.
2. Motivating the students.
3. Helping the students to prepare the final exam.
4. Improving their general satisfaction.
To reach these goals, the teachers designed an IBL methodology, elaborating a guide for the students in order to help them to prepare the course. For each unit, the students receive an introduction, a glossary, a set of questions and bibliographic references. The students have to answer the questions with information extracted from the referenced texts. All this process takes place in class, guided by the teachers. The final exam of the course is based on the questions prepared by the students in class.
3.2. Participants
This study has been carried out at the end of the course 2014-2015, which was the first year when the IBL methodology was applied. All the students of the course participated in the study, that is, the sample was the 100% of the population – 164 students. The age of the students was between 18 and 35, being the 88.2% between 19 and 23 years old. About the gender, 56.09% were male while 43.9 were female students.
The participant teachers were two, namely A and B. As it can be seen in Table 1, B
teached most of the students while A’s students represented only the 15.8%. A teached the afternoon groups while B teached the morning groups.
3.3. Assessment
The results obtained in by the application of the IBL methodology have been evaluated
by a questionnaire, where the students are asked to rate eleven items from 0 to 5, being
0 completely disagree and 5 completely agree. Items evaluate the following topics:
1. General satisfaction with the IBL methodology.
2. Experience in class with the IBL methodology.
3. Motivation.
4. Perceived usefulness when preparing the final exam. Students were also asked about the percentage of attendance to classes and their expected final grade. The data collected were analyzed using SPSS software.