APPLYING THE PROJECT-BASED LEARNING APPROACH IN THE DEGREE IN PUBLIC MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION AT THE UNIVERSITY JAUME I (SPAIN): A PILOT DESIGN OF DEGREE-BASED INTEGRATIVE PROJECT

The Public Management and Administration (PMA) degree at the Universitat Jaume I (Castellon, Spain) (UJI) is relatively new, in July of 2016; the first four years cycle (2011-2012 to 2015-2016) will be completed. This degree was designed according the Bologna degree structure adapted for Spain by the corresponding statute law: four years or 240 European Credit Transfer System credits. Since 2011, the degree has some serious problems: low visibility, low attraction; negative trend in enrolment rate; and high average of relinquishments. Since then, we proposed some measures to fight against the lack of student's motivation, but we think that new strategies are needed to solve the negative enrolment trend and low attraction. We found that the Project-Based Learning (PBL) strategy is the appropriate approach to reach this goal. We present a specific design to implement the Project-Based Learning in the PMA degree composed by three parts: (1) the proposal of the Spiral Implementation Model for PBL (SIM-PBL) in the PMA degree as a systemic approach; (2) the generation of instances of SIM-PBL taking a few subjects of the first semesters and substantiating the PBL life-cycle principles; and (3) to engage a pilot study in parallel with the ordinary degree life-cycle in the next academic year and compare results. All that will allow us consider more wide and complex institutional initiatives and changes in the PMA degree.