Abstract:

The “Centro de Estudios Superiores Universitarios de Galicia” (CESUGA) is a private university institution founded in La Coruña (Galicia - Spain) in 1995 with a view to providing high quality university education to students throughout Galicia and from the surrounding regions in the north west of Spain, especially León and Asturias. Since 1995 CESUGA functions in partnership with University College Dublin, a constituent university of the National University of Ireland, by offering the Bachelor of Commerce Degree. In order to adapt its academic structure to the targets set in the Bologna Declaration, in recent years University College Dublin (UCD), National University of Ireland, has undertaken the process of modularisation of its programmes. Formally, this UCD process implies structuring undergraduate degrees in three or four stages (years) and postgraduate in one or two. Each stage consists of 60 ECTS (two semesters of 30 ECTS) and, in general, is organised in 12 modules (6 per semester) of 5 ECTS each. Academically, the modularisation emphasises learning, not teaching; the role of the lecturers changes from teacher to “learning facilitator”. From a regulatory perspective, UCD internal regulation is no longer based on the Marks and Standards, which guided degree requirements before the modularisation, but on Academic Regulations. The modularisation of the Bachelor of Commerce Degree offered at CESUGA started in the 2010/2011 academic year. The results for the business programme show a clear improvement in the student academic performance.

NOTE: This paper is an extension of Great change, great impact? presented at the International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, held in November 2013 in Seville (Spain).

Keywords:

European Higher Education Area, Bologna Declaration, ECTS, Modularisation.