A bimonthly publication of AQU Catalunya

49

July 2010

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the completion of the study on The academic performance of first-year Law students at the University of Barcelona. The study, which was funded by the MQD, the PMID-UB and, above all, AQU Catalunya, was based on the academic data of first-year Law students in 2007-2008, which was when the pre-EHEA era was coming to an end. When the paper was published, Bachelor degrees had already become a reality (the first Bachelor's degree course in Law at the UB and the majority of the public universities in Catalonia was introduced in the 2009-2010 academic year) and the pre-EHEA degree and diploma courses and qualifications have been phased out.

Far from minimising the importance of the study, however, we believe that this actually enhances it because it will soon be possible to compare – which is important in itself – the academic behaviour in the broad sense of first-year Law students from the pre-EHEA with that of students in current degree programmes. The vast majority of first-year students enter the higher education system for the first time and many of the problems that they encounter are just the same as they were five years ago, irrespective of the degree they study.

There are certain characteristics in the study that should be pointed out. To start with, the study comprises various different ones: there are the typical descriptive and analytical data on academic performance (highly detailed according to courses, groups, methodology, etc.), but there is also a sub-study on class absence and a shorter one on student drop-outs. These two were produced – and this is also important – as the result of a telephone interview survey of all first-year students, totalling more than six hundred individuals in all.

The research itself was helped by the fact that it was of an institutional nature, given that it was supported by the governing body of the Faculty of Law. Access to the data was thus made easier, and physical and human resources were also made available. The support and advice provided by AQU Catalunya was likewise of key importance, and Sebastián Rodríguez from the Agency helped considerably to mitigate the main problem that we faced in producing the study, namely, the lack of a methodological model as a guideline. In spite of a review of some of the existing bibliography on the subject, we continued to be at a loss as to how to find other studies dealing with the subject in the same way that we wanted to. So what could we do?

Instead of wanting to corroborate the fact that there exists a problem with academic performance or merely quantifying such a problem, the main aim of the study was to establish a basic picture of the complexity of the different causal factors that affect the academic performance of first-year students. The study links academic performance to a series of variables: teaching methodology, class absence, studying and working at a job at the same time, the conditions and system for access to university and, lastly, the rules governing ongoing student status at university. The combined analysis and assessment of this process is one of the

Nevertheless, new studies on the complex issue of academic performance that are both comprehensive and provide an overview of what is happening are required. It is absolutely essential for the different variables that have an effect on the academic outcomes of students to be accurately established so that academic policies to enhance the quality of teaching and, consequently, student achievement can be designed and implemented.

The study being presented here has been useful in at least two different ways in the UB's Faculty of Law. One has been the impetus given to new studies on the subject, as we doing here, but with a more accurate and mature design. Above all, however, it has helped – and we trust it will be the same in other faculties – in the design of a true academic teaching policy that contains actions that are directly aimed at solving highly diverse types of problems that impinge on the improvement of the academic performance of first-year university students. As a matter of fact, the main lines of action of this new academic policy referred to here have already been put forward at the 6th International Congress on University Teaching and Innovation in Barcelona (VI CIDUI, June 2010).