During the last few years several experiences have been carried out in educational innovation in the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid by the aim to allow an easier implementation of the declaration of Bolonia. This one tries to establish an higher education European space, based mainly on the creation of the European Credit Transfer System, as a measure of the student’s workout, to fulfil the objectives formulated in the plans of study and in the subjects. Additional elements of quality control are included such as the accreditation of the programs and the Diploma Supplement, where the knowledge and acquired competitions will be gathered, in a common format.
One of the new initiatives of the UPM in this area has been the creation of Groups of Educational Innovation and the summons of subsidized projects, which there tries to foment the participation and association of the teachers in actions of educational innovation, with the final aim of the constant improvement of the quality of the education. Some of the principal lines of work defined by the University are: development of new methods of learning and evaluation, attention to the student, curricular development, incorporation of the ICT to the real-time education, coordination of formative programs among the university education and those of baccalaureate one, adjustment of the educational organization, an so one ….
The educational innovation’s group of the Telecommunication Systems has recently developed a project in order to improve the process of learning and especially to allow an easy adjustment to Bolonia's process in the degree titles. This improvement must include an important change in the educational and assessors methods which allow a major implication of the students in his own curricular development.
The main activities in educational innovation developed during this project and that turn out to be detailed in the presentation have been the following ones:
- Establishment of organization procedures and structure of several interrelated subjects, belonging to the same course of a career. These procedures include: definition of objectives in knowledge as well as in competitions; guides' accomplishment of learning and development of the course and the utilization of a platform of virtual environment of learning inside a strategy b-learning, as element of follow-up and tasks control.
- Utilization of educational methodologies orientated to the learning, groups of work, both informal and formal. Continuous evaluation of knowledge and competitions, the above mentioned specially for the case of the practical educations.
- A Study on the corresponding load in ECTS credits. Follow-up, control and analysis of the times paid for the dedication on the part of the pupils and teachers. Coordination between subjects and sequence of activities.
We will also present the most important results of this project. Firstly in what concerns the academic results obtained by the pupils and his comparison with the reached ones in other subjects with classic methodology, and with the obtained ones during the previous courses. Secondly we will present the study carried out on the times of dedication on the part of the pupils, as well as the opinions of these on the dedication and on the methodology used, obtained across a constant follow-up of the activities and by means of surveys, and finally the principal conclusions of the teachers participants in the project.