USING THE PLATFORM ACADEMIC VISATEL AT UNIVERSITY OF JAEN

This abstract presents an educational innovation project which has been promoted by assistant professors of the department Telecommunications Engineering within the Polytechnic School of Linares, University of Jaen (Spain). Also, an external institution called “Colegio Oficial de Ingenieros de Telecomunicación” (COIT) or Telecommunication Engineer Official Association has participated. The Project of educational innovation is part of the line of action called “projects of educational innovation for degrees” that in turn is part of the “Academic and teaching staff Office Organization” which can be found within the University of Jaén.

The initiative consists of allowing students of Master Telecommunication Engineering to obtain a technical certificate of the project elaborated in a core course called Projects, following a procedure similar to which already carry out the professionals with the signature and technical certificate of their projects. As well, by carrying out this activity the students would then be able to gain their respective technical certificates of the project developed as their MSc. thesis. In this way the initiative aims to present the respective student with the professional activities carried out by a typical Telecommunications Engineer; their facultative role and the professional institutions that endorse this activity.

According to different studies carried out by COIT, students of Master Telecommunication Engineering are generally “ignorant of the professional activity carried out by that of an Engineer of Telecommunication”. For this reason, COIT has created the academic VISATel® initiative within the universities so that these students can gain a better understanding (via contributing to specific projects) of the above stated activities and in turn their technical certificate.

The project has been a success as all the students who participated gained the knowledge of what procedures to follow in order to acquire the technical certificate of the professional projects of the Telecommunication Engineers and in doing so became more familiar with the platform used.

The initiative has been successfully created by the University of Jaen and hence the Polytechnic School of Linares has gain the possibility of managing a record of endorsed projects. Therefore, the students have access to all the projects certified by the School as a result of a MSc thesis or a work developed within the Projects course. As the initiative is linked to COIT, the technical revision of the projects that are sent to the Academic VISATel® platform are carried out and adhere to the same criteria than those used by a professional engineer when they are applying for their technical certificate. Thus, the certificate provided has a genuine value within the employment market.