Abstract:

Currently in Spain is under way to design new official PhD curriculum under the impulse of the Real Decreto 99/2011 (RD 99/2011), of 28 January 2011 (Boletin Oficial del Estado, No. 35, 10/02/2011: 13909- 13926; http://www.boe.es). The RD 99/2011 plenary introduces organizational and teaching approaches of the Bologna Declaration in the third level of high education in Spanish universities. Among other things, one of the most important challenges is the design and application of training activities as the formal evaluation of the learning progress of PhD students, and the appearance of two different PhD student profiles: full and partial time students. The full time student profile has a normal period of three years for reaching the PhD degree. The partial time student profile has a normal period of five years for reaching the PhD degree. For both profiles, the regulation of doctoral programs under RD 99/2011 developed by the University Jaume I (UJI-PhD Regulation, 26/01/2012; http://www.uji.es/bin/infoest/estudis/doctorat/norma.pdf), establishes a minimum of 600 hours per period, aside from the research activities, for carrying out the training activities covering horizontal and specific competencies. The same regulation identifies and organizes the training activities with relation to both types of competencies. In addition, the RD 99/2011 creates a complement for the PhD degree, named ‘International doctorate’, taking in account students who develop part of the doctoral (research and training) activities out of Spain.

The authors are members of the working group responsible for drafting the new doctoral program in Computer Science according to the RD 99/2011 and general directions and recommendations of the verification program of the Agencia Nacional de Evaluación de la Calidad y Acreditación (ANECA) (Spanish Ministry of Education) named ‘VERIFICA’ (http://www.aneca.es/ANECA).

The aim of this work is to describe the application of the new official PHD directives in the new of Informatics doctoral Program, focusing in the description of training activities (writing a JCR journal paper; writing a conference communication and presenting it; developing a research stay; participation in seminaries; assistance to training courses; and participation in research project general meetings) and the elaboration of the schedules in both profiles, the national and international PhD curriculum and in the subprofiles partial and full time (3 or 5 years). Therefore, four schedules were proposed for the corresponding subprofiles: full time-national; full time-international; part time-national; and part time-international. One of the requirements to obtaining the international doctorate is to develop a research stay out of Spain with a minimal continued period of 80 hours (i.e. writing a journal paper was quantified in 90 to 120 hours; writing a conference communication and presenting it was quantified in 50 hours; etc.) Currently, the proposal is under revision by the ANECA. And we estimate it will approve and the PhD program will start in 2013.

Keywords:

Training activities in the Doctoral Program, Computer Science PhD Curriculum, VERIFICA, Description and Scheduling of Training Activities.