The construction of the European Space for Higher Education (EEES) requires university degrees to adapt to the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). Due to this, an innovative Teaching Group, composed of the professors from the first year of studies, was created at the Albacete Forestry and Agronomy College (ETSIA) of the University of Castilla-La Mancha. Starting in June of 2005, the group has aimed at elaborating a programme characterized by a high degree of cohesion and coordination of first year materials. The subjects dealt with in this paper, BIOLOGY AND PLANT BIOLOGY, are both taught on an annual basis in the first year of Technical Agriculture and Forestry Engineering, with a high number of credits (12 LOU credits = 9.5 ECTS credits.) After experiencing poor academic results previous to the study, the professors who teach these subjects opted for changes in methodology that affect all aspects of the course programme: adaptation to the ECTS system based on students’ work, programming by competences, including knowledge objectives and other procedural and applied objectives within the appropriate framework;; implementation of a new teaching methodology that incorporates real student involvement in the formative process; a model for evaluation that follows up on the proposed activities; the active participation of students and the evaluation of results. This experience has been carried out over the past two academic years, so we currently have results that can be evaluated. The agreements reached by the group of teachers (GD1) in order to coordinate the programs were very satisfactory and should be expanded to include the remaining years of the degree programmes. The rapport within the group also favoured a sensible optimism that enabled us to make necessary and irreversible changes. The results obtained were favourable as students did participate in the ECTS proposals, with a tendency to increase the number of participating students, although there were differences between new students and students who had to repeat the subject. Results included a increase in the number of students who finished the course successfully, especially for the students who were evaluated periodically. However, in some groups the students did not achieve high marks, an aspect that we certainly must try to correct in the future. Our proposal is to continue to improve our programming and obtain more ambitious objectives focussed on necessary competences for future engineers, beginning with a first course of study in agreement with EEES proposals.