IMPLEMENTING NEW EXPERIENCES IN ETCS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION PROCEDURES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY ACCORDING TO THE BOLOGNA DECLARATION
J. Blanco, F. Mendia, L. MartÃn, F. Pena
University of Basque Country (SPAIN)
Since last five years the complex process for the implementation of the so called “Bologna accords” has been increased in a substantial way all over the European countries. Its purpose is to create the European higher educational area by achieving academic degree standards and quality assurance standards much more comparable and compatible throughout Europe. It was named after the place it was proposed, the University of Bologna, with the signing in 1999 of the Bologna declaration by Ministers of Education from 29 European countries in the Italian city of Bologna.
Inside this context, the aims of the present work are basically two:
1. The elaboration and presentation of a complete educational proposal according to the ETCS criteria focusing on its further application for a specific subject in the field of engineering.
2. The discussion, both in a personal and a collective way, about a proper higher educational practice to improve the management of the curriculum for the new challenges.
Thus, one of the most positive aspects that have been appreciated in this process of change is such a different way of organizing the student’s curriculum involving them in their own process of education/learning as they became now active figures. Other positive aspects to consider are undoubtedly the major approximation to the real scenario, moving away from the excessively theoretical traditional scheme and approaching in turn other educational systems, being much more transparent since the student knows in advance all about he/she will be evaluated at the end of their educational stage.
As for the negative aspects, to highlight on one hand the initial fear that provokes in the fellow any change that could extract them from their comfortable current position that means the hard requirement of encouraging them to be their own figures in the learning process. In the other hand according to our own experiences in the matter, the real problem arises from the number of students, so for a sum higher to 20 or 25 this system becomes unfeasible as it results exhausting for the lecturer due to the enormous amount of tasks to be handled such are mainly the way to evaluate the achievement of different competences. Additional negative aspects would be in short the lack of criteria for the standardization of the contents for all the subjects, getting further away from the matters provided in the same area of knowledge for different institutions.
Conclusions of this experimental study would emphasize that the impulse stand out to the tasks of cooperative and coordinate work since this will be an effective way to achieve any significant goal. In this way it is very important to be able to delegate in others some particular matters for its better adequacy to them. Specially, in terms of engineering, this type of work in group is nowadays considered to be a crucial step in the right direction, so in the near future engineers will depend directly on other persons work and in turn other persons work possibly will depend on them in almost any single project that they will have to tackle in their professional life. These and other important aspects need to have been clearly reflected earlier in their educational stages in order to show them the right way to do it.