IMPACT OF THE INTRODUCTION OF AN ON LINE SELF-EVALUATION SYSTEM ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN THE SUBJECT OF ECONOMICS FOR LAW STUDENTS

The specific profile of the students from faculties other than Economics or Business Studies demands the introduction of new activities for complementing lectures, additional study material and bibliographic references suggested by the syllabus. The adaptation process to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) provides an opportunity for incorporating new methodologies for making the student play the main role in the learning process. In this context, a group of teachers from an innovation group in teaching methodologies of the University of Barcelona (UB) started, during the 2010/2011 academic year, a pedagogical experience in the subject of Economics in the Law School of the UB. This experience consists in a voluntary self-evaluation system that allows students to improve their knowledge in the subject and, consequently, increase their academic performance. This system includes a set of questionnaires and exercises which can be answered online using the UB's Moodle platform. A virtual forum complements both the self-evaluation and the traditional personal tutoring systems. The results show four main findings. Firstly, there is a positive relationship between the participation in the self-evaluation activities and the student's performance. Secondly, the comparison between two groups with the same teacher, before and after the introduction of the new methodology, showed that students had, in average, higher marks in the group following the self-evaluation system. Thirdly, it was noted the relevance of the use of this new teaching tool for proactive students and, therefore, the central role of the teacher to encourage students. Finally, the members of the innovation group acknowledge the importance of developing this new learning methodology in an environment (Moodle platform) very close to the current information receiving parameters of our students.