COMPETENCES RECOGNITION AND ASSESSMENT IN A CROSS- BORDER CONTEXT

The project called: Life Long Learning Transversalis (LLL-T), is a project within the framework of the Interreg Program POCTEFA 2014-2020 (Territorial Cooperation Program Spain - France - Andorra) by a set of 9 partners constituting a cross-border network whose objective is to harmonize and reinforce the lifelong learning practices to return the challenges of each particular region

The main objective, as a part of LLL-T project is enhancing the cooperation among universities and companies on the north and south of the Pyrenees). Transversalis Girona’s University Team (T-UdG team), have come up with a proposal to facilitate the recognition and assessment of competences at the master degree programs imparted at the partners' universities and also to define which are the required competences to apply for a cross border job.

The main goal of this proposal is to enhance the mobility of master’s degree students among universities and companies across the Pyrenees and to facilitate the academic recognition and assessment according to the Bologna principles.

The methodology, based on the previous research done (Bikfalvi, A. et al., 2018) by some of us in this field and the previous work done by T-UdG team, (Alcala, M. et al., 2019) we have proposed a procedure for the recognition and assessment of the cross border, transferable and specific competences included in the master's degree profiles of two fields of knowledge Agro-food and Tourism programs imparted in the Girona, Lleida, Zaragoza, Perpignan and Toulouse Universities.

This procedure has been shared and approved by all the TRANSVERSALIS partners and it also can be useful for future projects with similar goals.

The first step has been to discuss and share the meaning of competence, and more specifically the meaning of cross border competences among TRANSVERSALIS universities and companies.

The second step has been to collect the master's degree competence profile from the partner universities. We have been analysing the competence master's program profile in four fields of knowledge: agro-alimentation, mechanical engineering, tourism and information technology.

The third step has been to design a tool to analyse and compare the competences of the programs in the same field.

The fourth step has been to design assessment tools and a model recognition certificate awarded by TRANSVERSALIS.

The fifth step has been the implementation of the proposal. The assessment of competences includes: the evaluation of the tutors (both, from the company and university) and self-evaluation, using in all the cases the shared tools.

The sixth step will be the assessment of the whole procedure and introducing changes and improvements, if necessary, to expand the procedure to other situations with similar goals.

As a results and the provisional conclusions it is interesting to highlight that different programs and structures analysis done, give us a comparability near to 100%.
All the competences analysed in different masters can be included in three groups:
a) Homologated: those that are present in both analysed master's,
b) Singular or complementary: those that belong only to a master's program and would be necessary to add to the other one,
c) Cross border: those that are necessary in both master's program to train for a cross border job.