FIRST PRACTICE IN GUIDED LEARNING FOR UNIVERSITY TEACHING QUALITY

At the beginning of the last academic year, Principalship of Quality Assurance of the University of Granada (http://calidad.ugr.es/) decided to train beginner teachers by means of a Course of Initiation to the university teaching, targeted to teachers with less of 3 years of experience and researchers with docent dedication. Given the importance of this type of courses, being made with increasing frequency, to give the novice teacher skills and abilities so that university students receive a quality teaching. Specifically this course was developed in 5 modules and in a final stage consisting on a coaching experience of these novel teachers under supervision of senior experienced lecturers. These latter ones were from the same specific area as the beginners. In our case, this coaching period was spent in the Faculty of Pharmacy and it was composed of different parts: Firstly, we were encouraged to attend two magister classes, the one given by an expert lecturer, and the other by a professor who had received a prize of educational excellence of the University of Granada in 2008. This action was an excellent chance to observe other educational practices, and moreover, which are objectively excellent ones. Final step of this training process consisted on assisting our teacher mentor to several classes taught by new teachers, taking a record of these. The record allowed us to detect our weak points in the process of education and improving them for later classes.
The experience lived with this training course, and specially, with the final stage of coaching by senior teachers, has been fabulous, both because of the new acquired teaching skills such as at personal level, establishing a professional collaboration which has been extended over the course.