COORDINATION AND ADAPTATION TO THE EUROPEAN HIGHER EDUCATION AREA IN SECOND YEAR ENGINEERING STUDIES

In this paper we present our coordination experience in studies of the second year of the two specialties at Escuela Universitaria de Ingeniería Técnica Forestal (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid). We have created a working group in which all the interested lecturers take part. In this group, that meets periodically, different academic activities, educational programs, methodologies and evaluation systems are coordinated, focusing on educative innovation and adaptation to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Student’s guides showing homogenous criteria for application in the next years are being elaborated. This coordination will also serve to carry out a complete follow-up of the students development; specially of those ones who followed last year integrated studies of adaptation to EHEA.
The number of lecturers (22), subjects (12) and Departments (7) involved in the project is very important because they represent a large number of factors. This fact will allow the results to have a significant meaning. The coordination in academic and methodological aspects will bring relevant benefits. Some methodologies that are already being used by part of the lecturers will become accessible and applicable by others: problem and project based learning, cooperative learning, etc. Several subjects have already generated didactic material for the Web such as: notes, self-learning tests, key-provided problems, forums for discussions, etc. The coordination of these experiences will make their generalization easier.
Herein we present the organization process of the project and the most important results obtained in the first semester of this academic course.