Interdisciplinary cooperative learning and rubrics for improving the learning-teaching process

Abstract

The revision of the degrees to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is an opportunity to improve the education of students and guide teachers to widen actions towards skills development. The acquisition of competencies requires to integrate active teaching methodologies that allow the generation against the mere transmission of the knowledge. Also, many studies warn of the scarce transfer of knowledge in the subjects when they are considered individually. Interdisciplinary work is a valuable tool for students to make connections, establish and find answers to problem situations, and adjust their learning to a comprehensive knowledge.
Taking these aspects into account, we have developed an interdisciplinary teaching innovation experience at the university through which we have incorporated the contents and skills of various subjects in order to address the process of solving economic problems. Interdisciplinarity has been worked with cooperative learning techniques. The interaction of these aspects is the reason why we have called the experience “Interdisciplinary Cooperative Learning” (ICL). Moreover, learning assessment of the experience has been made individually (hetero and peer) and group (rubrics and peer assessment).
The results of the experience show several aspects: 1) The ICL methodology allows not only to learn in content but also in cross competencies. 2) The interconnection among subjects has allowed students to adjust their learning to a more comprehensive knowledge 3) The combination of a variety of teaching innovations has had a positive impact on students' motivation. iv) It has been some positive learning outcomes in students, higher than using only traditional methods, and thus, they have improved their academic results.
As a conclusion, we find that this methodology of learning has a high added value in the learning process of the students.