Abstract:

The Final Degree Project (FDP) and Final Master's Thesis (FMT) represent the capstone of university training, a stage at which students are expected to demonstrate initiative, critical thinking, and autonomous decision-making — competencies that are equally demanded by the labour market and essential for professional life. However, in practice, a substantial number of students approach this phase exhibiting persistent difficulties: poor self-organisation, excessive dependence on their supervisor, insecurity when making independent decisions, limited capacity for critical self-assessment, and deficient communication of their learning progress. These shortcomings not only compromise the quality of the final output but also reveal structural gaps in how higher education prepares students for independent academic and professional work.

Autonomous learning and self-regulation are widely recognised as core enablers for students to adopt an active, responsible role throughout every phase of their projects process — from work organisation and reflection on results, to self-evaluation and effective communication of acquired knowledge. In parallel, recent studies have examined the impact of ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems (QMS) on educational institutions, reporting positive effects on teaching-learning processes, particularly in the areas of tutoring, assessment, classroom methodologies, and communication flows. A central advantage of QMS frameworks is that they provide a systematic structure for standardising key procedures and ensuring coherence across planning, execution, and evaluation stages. Crucially, one of the foundational principles of ISO 9001 is process-based management — defined as a set of interrelated activities that transform inputs into intended results — which aligns closely with the sequential nature of Final Degree Project and Final Master's Thesis development.

To address the identified challenges, this work proposes a structured framework grounded in the ISO 9001 standard and its process-oriented approach. The core innovation lies in incorporating the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle as a guiding methodology to ensure that the FDP/FMT development process is systematically supported with the resources, checkpoints, and feedback mechanisms necessary to foster autonomous learning. Each phase of the PDCA cycle is mapped onto a corresponding stage of the student's project journey: planning the research, executing the work, verifying progress through self-assessment, and acting upon the lessons learnt. This approach transforms the QMS from a purely administrative tool into a pedagogical scaffold.

Keywords:

Aautonomous learning, ISO 9001, PDCA cycle, final degree project, quality management in higher education, self-regulation, process-based approach.