Development of competences in postgraduate studies of finance: A project-based learning (PBL) case study

The methodological paradigm advanced in European higher education during recent decades focuses on the concept of ‘competence’ to achieve student employability. This professionalization of education requires more flexible and active teaching-learning contexts. This paper presents an empirical research into the application of project-based learning (PBL) in postgraduate studies of finance in the University of Jaén (Spain). Considering the important role that students’ perspective plays in their own motivation and performance, we pursue three main objectives. First, we aim to analyse students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of this methodology to improve some key competences for student employability. Second, we explore whether the perceived utility of these competences changes after the PBL experiment. Finally, we aim to explore students’ opinion about the usefulness, advantages and disadvantages of this method. Our findings support the perceived effectiveness of PBL for improving teamwork, communication, creativity, organization and information management competences. In addition, results show that students were highly satisfied, emphasizing the superiority of PBL in comparison with traditional learning methods, and its usefulness for learning about financing sources and to making contact with the business world.