Abstract:

A quality university education requires professors who demonstrate skills to face the complexity and inherent changes of teaching. The training of new professors has a key role in the professional development, especially in the first years of the University teaching. Beginning professors have two main tasks: they must teach and they must learn to teach. In all training programs, the counselling process must become a fundamental axis and, in turn, promoted by the university itself.

The Unit of Quality, Innovation and Prospective of the University of Granada and within its program of professors training, performs each year a program aimed at consolidating the support offered to the beginning professors of this University in their work centres, constituting teaching teams. This initiative aims to take advantage of human resources, in terms of professors with experience and motivation, to help the training and integration of those colleagues who begin their work as professors in this institution and thus contribute to increase the quality of teaching. It is an initiative based on teaching collaboration and institutional co-responsibility as main factors in the improvement of teaching practice and the quality of teaching in higher education.

The multidisciplinary teaching team in the Faculty of Pharmacy, from his creation 9 years ago, participates in all the actions focused in the support and formation of the beginner professor and in the improvement of the teaching of the University of Granada. Nowadays, the teaching team is constituted by 9 experienced professors (with 20 years of experience in teaching, coordinating grade level curricula, tutorial action plans, teaching innovation projects and implementation and monitoring of quality assurance systems in undergraduate degrees) and 20 beginner professors of different departments with different professional categories teaching in three degrees of the faculty: “Pharmacy”, “Human Nutrition and Dietetic”, “Food Science and Technology”. In every academic course, new beginner professors are incorporated to the team.

This paper features reflections and initiatives of the members of the multidisciplinary teaching team in the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Granada to contribute to the improvement of the quality of present and future university teaching.

In conclusion, the creation and consolidation of a teaching team made up of experienced professors committed to the initial training of the new teaching staff, gives rise to a space for joint reflection, exchange of experiences to foster innovation, collaboration and mutual learning which contributes to the continuous improvement of teaching practice

Keywords:

Higher education, teaching innovation, cooperative learning, mentoring.