Abstract:

The concept of quality has, over the last few several decades, become both central to the field of higher education and an increasingly important issue, although it is recognized that it is a difficult concept to define, given its multidimensional nature. UNESCO defines quality in higher education as a multi-dimensional, multi-level, and dynamic concept relating to the contextual settings of an educational model, to the institutional mission and objectives, and to specific standards within a given system, institution, program, or discipline.

The Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) has emerged as a new challenge as regards adapting Computer studies to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), thus leading to the definition, maintenance and establishment of new curricula in order to adapt to the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS).

One of the strategies adopted by the UCLM for the future short and medium term is to improve the internationalization of its studies through its full commitment to bilingual Bachelor’s degrees. Another strategy towards which the UCLM is committed is online training and/or blended learning in order to provide students with flexible mechanisms, versatility, personalization and accessibility, thus maximizing the potential of new technologies.

The Ciudad Real School of Computer Sciences, which is no stranger to the University of Castilla la Mancha’s commitments has, in its strategic plan, decided to implement the short-term bilingual Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science in parallel with the Computer Science degree currently taught in Spanish, and the implementation of a blended learning format in the official Master’s degree currently offered on campus. These two clear commitments are aligned with the UCLM’s strategic plan, and require an in-depth and efficient quality process if this implementation is to be achieved with the quality guarantees imposed by society as regards the institution of and guidelines proposed by the Bologna Declaration.

In order to implement these two new commitments, it is desirable to achieve high quality and continuously improved bilingual learning and blended learning. The intention of this research is therefore to act as a guide to ensure that the implementation of both the bilingual Bachelor’s degree and the blended learning Master’s degree is carried out correctly in a coherent and coordinated manner, and meets the highest standards of quality. It is therefore necessary to define a quality assurance methodology with which to ensure and guide the definition of both activities, along with more appropriate evaluation criteria for the particulars of these new disciplines, such as the monitoring and strict control of the most important aspects that must be achieved and the current state in terms of the quality present during the implementation of both the Bachelor’s degree and the blended learning Master’s degree.

In order to monitor quality and ensure improvement it is necessary to develop an integrated control board in which a specific set of indicators and metrics representing important aspects that must be measured for each discipline, are represented and visualized in order to know the level of quality, factors to improve, aspects to consider and changes to adopt at any time, with the objective of improving the quality of Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.

Keywords:

Quality assessment, bilingual grade, semi-presential master, Computer Science Engineering.