Abstract:

In the context of the Spanish Universities adaptation to the European Higher Education Area all Technological Schools syllabuses have been modified to the new Bachelor and Master degrees. Progressive introduction of these new curricula is faced from different temporal planning depending on each University and even cross-curricular competences are an objective itself in several syllabuses.

Nevertheless, most of the Universities have not included any of these cross-curricular competences in no syllabus as they have done with basic or technical subjects. So although everybody at university community agrees with the importance of getting cross-curricular competences, no one has thought how to incorporate them in their plans.

After selecting and analyzing most of the cross-curricular competences that students found more relevant in order to adapt their curricula to the actual labour market necessities, the possible difficulties of incorporating them throughout the different subjects of a syllabus have been tested, paying special attention to schedules and required teachers’ abilities.

As a result, a way to improve cross-curricular competences of students has been generated following 7 steps:
1. Select the cross-curricular competences the institution prefers for their students.
2. Make a schedule for teaching the competences throughout the syllabus.
3. Select the suitable subjects for introducing them.
4. Train the staff involved in those subjects, in the abilities required to teach the cross-curricular competences chosen.
5. Start as planned in the first year with just one competence.
6. Check the development of the students at each level.
7. Recognize by means of a proper certificate the students achieving certain standards (and only those ones).

As can be seen, it is proposed to introduce the competences one by one in order to watch the learning evolution and to facilitate the necessary adjustments as the process is going along. Each year one competence will be added to the general schedule so it takes several courses to have the complete map of cross-curricular competences implemented.

This work shows how to choose among too many competences, and bearing in mind the social necessities, the most appropriate for one institution, gives a way to make a schedule for introducing them in a syllabus and proposes to make easy the different steps shown above.

Keywords:

Cross-curricular competences, generic skills.