Search

The units or training centers (ICE IDES CQUID, ELC) of the eight public universities in Catalonia, constituted as Interuniversity Group on Teacher Education (GIFD), are currently undergoing a reformulation process concerning the training activities and plans being offered to university teachers, in order to facilitate the development of their teaching activity. The rethinking of their actions is born from a common interest linking the quality of university teachers' training with coherent approaches in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). This interest and concern has led the group to conduct a research study with the objective of establishing a set of standard teaching skills for the faculty staff to master, with the purpose of successfully undertaking the development of the new degree courses in line with the directives of the European Higher Education Area. This paper contains a thorough examination and analysis regarding the main features that activities and training programs aimed at teachers should include, in order to facilitate the performance of the teaching activity itself, by focusing at the work of training units or training centers, at the academic institutions where they belong, and at the related agencies, and by requesting them to update their educational tasks in order to meet the new requirements that the role of teachers demand. The aim of this work is to stimulate thought and to generate a debate on the direction that university teachers' training must follow, not only as a strategic element of the institution, but also contributing to achieve the quality objectives to which universities have committed themselves in the process of validating the new degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from over 21,600 students who left Catalan higher education institutions during the academic years 2000–2001 and 2001–2002 have been analysed in order to describe the academic and personal profiles of university dropouts. Additionally, a telephone survey and face-to-face interviews with a pilot group of leavers were conducted to gather additional qualitative information about the reasons for their decision. The influences on non-completion can be reduced to three main factors, among which dissatisfaction with the quality of the students’ experience, family and work responsibilities as well as economic difficulties, are prominent. Analysis conducted showed no significant differences between Catalan higher education institutions, with dropout percentages ranging from 28% to 33%. These rates should be understood within a context of broad access to higher education. Within the European Higher Education Area scenario, the findings have triggered institutional endeavours to improve the quality of the students’ and teachers’ experience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Spain is currently adapting its existing university system to European Higher Education Area guidelines for the 2009-2010 academic year. Against this background, we analyzed the development and transformation of the audio-visual communication degree currently offered in Catalan universities, consisting of a hybrid of theoretical and practical knowledge applied in the audio-visual field. We describe research results based on the following data: audio-visual curricular content for eight Catalan universities, nine in-depth interviews conducted with heads of audiovisual communication studies and a survey of 111 companies regarding labour market performance of audio-visual communication students on work experience programmes. On the basis of the results of our study we propose a solution to the problem of adapting audio-visual communication degrees to the European Higher Education Area system, based on developing specialisation pathways for different job roles, media platforms and genres. The pathway option equips the degree with professional specificity and enables flexible curricula to be developed in accordance with the capacities of individual universities and the demands of the private sector. The study also highlights the lack of definition in the job roles of audio-visual communication graduates and the difficulties in establishing differential skills for this course of studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]