Teaching innovation to acquire skills in the grade of criminology

Abstract

In view of the demands of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the recent creation of a Degree in Criminology at the University of Malaga, this year has begun its first course of the Degree in Criminology. It has been designed in a way that enables us to experimentally apply a new teaching methodology to a reduced group of 3rd year students of the University Expert Diploma in Crime and Public Security at the same University, within the syllabus of the annual subject Criminology II and Victimology. The reduced number of students who, moreover, possess statistical and methodological skills in Criminology that were acquired in the previous years make it the ideal group in which to centre our experiment. Here we present this teaching methodology and we evaluate its appropriateness in terms of the acquisition of certain competences. The positive experience of this methodology and its great adaptation, complementarity and coordination capacities between different subjects of the Degree in Criminology turn it into a tool that will probably be employed in the coming years, even if the sizes of the groups and the chronological distribution of some subjects make it slightly more complicated. Nevertheless, we will now present what could become in the near future a project of teaching innovation which will require the involvement and coordination of those in charge of the different subjects.