Abstract:

Background:
This work describes a proposal aimed at improving teaching coordination in the context of a computing engineering degree. The implementation of such proposal is also discussed along with the advantages and drawbacks found during the process.

Purpose/Hypothesis:
Coordinating the teaching staff is an essential task that helps the degree students to successfully achieve the complete set of generic and specific skills included in the program.

Design/Method:
Several mechanisms for both horizontal and vertical coordination have been implemented. These mechanisms aim at ensuring that every skill is correctly developed and assessed. Also, they try to obtain a balanced workload for the students along the semester. A coordination team is designated to oversee the procedure to implement.

Results:
The paper provides: a definition of “skill domain level” that combines the level at which a skill is developed and the level at which it is assessed, a way of assigning each generic skill to those courses that deal with it, a way of standardizing how each skill is assessed at each level, a mechanism for vertical coordination of specific skills, a schedule-based mechanism for balancing the predicted student workload, a survey-based mechanism for obtaining the actual workload, an analysis of the issues found after putting into practice all these tasks, and some conclusions for improving the coordination process in the future.

Conclusions:
To coordinate a teaching team implies designing a set of mechanisms and providing tools for easing the process but, above all, it requires the involvement of lecturers and students.

Keywords:

Teaching coordination, EHEA, computing, skills, student workload, learning outcomes.