Abstract:

Nowadays, the students exchange programmes have reached a great popularity, especially due to the recent creation of European Higher Education Area and the increasingly globalised labour market, in whose context the mobility of students during their degree constitutes a good point in favour in order to find a future job. This fact has produced that the number of students which participate in this mobility programs has increased hugely in the last years.

In the particular case of Arquitecture degree at University of Alicante (Spain), in recent academic courses the number of exchanges programmes students has reached the number of approximately 140, 70 of incoming ones and 70 of outgoing students, most of them of the Erasmus+ programme, and it is expected that this number will rise in the next years.

Traditionally, in the majority of the degrees there is a mobility coordinator teacher, which helps and advises the students in the administrative procedures related to their particular mobility. However, the management of the high number of students, which participate in exchange programmes in the Arquitecture degree at University of Alicante, is complex, especially as a consequence the abovementioned administrative procedures which is necessary to perform.

Then, in addition to mobility coordinator teacher, it has been created a team of teachers which help him. The program in which that team is defined is called “International tutorial action program”, and its first experience has been during the academic year 2016-17. In this program, several exchange students (both incoming and outgoing) are assigned to each tutor teacher of this team, and he has to help them in all related to their mobility, as preparing the learning agreement, travelling questions, advices once arrived at destiny university, etc.

In this work, the experience of the author as an international tutor teacher of Arquitecture degree students at University of Alicante will be described, with both Erasmus and non-European exchange students, including the learned lessons as well as the found difficulties and the proposals to improve the program in the future. As a conclusion, it has been generally noted that this program has improved the management of mobility students, shortening the time of the different procedures.

Keywords:

Student exchange programmes, students mobility management, Erasmus, Arquitecture, international tutor teacher, European Higher Education Area.