THE IMPORTANCE OF PERCEPTIONS ON THE LEARNING PROCESS. USING RUBRICS TO ASSESS AND IMPROVE GENERAL SKILLS IN LEARNING OF ECONOMICS

We present here a teaching innovation project that has been developed under the economic support of the University of Barcelona. The main goal of the experience has addressed basic generic skills of the first year students of economics. The teaching team has been composed by teachers of different disciplines, such as Mathematics, History, and Economic Policy. Our main concern has been to assess the analytical skill of our students at the same time as we have developed specific tools to improve it. Methodologically we have designed a variety of rubrics either to assess our students either to self-assessment purposes. We can summarize our main findings in the following points. The first one is that generic skills must be worked from interdisciplinary teaching teams. The second one is that they are fully embedded into the specific contents of each subject in a way that it is impossible to achieve generic skills without a comprehensive knowledge of the contents. As a result of the previous statement, specific teaching materials should be developed by each subject to promote the acquisition of generic skills. A third one conclusion is devoted to the topic of perceptions as a way of getting skills. We have systematically found an overvaluation of the students regarding to their skills. A first step to improve these skills must be oriented to a better understanding of the real individual achievement. We have used self-assessment rubrics to make the students realized about that. A final conclusion of the present project consists on the finding that our first year graduate students have low levels on their analytical skills, once we compare them with other generic skills such as writing skills.