Abstract:

Administration and Public Management (Gestión y Administración Pública, GAP in future) is one of the diplomas of the University of Barcelona (UB) that in academic year 2002-03 pioneered the process of adaptation to the European Space of Higher Education (ESHE). In summer of 2004, the department of Universities of the Catalan autonomous government launched a proposal for giving support to the Catalan universities that committed themselves to throw the adaptation ahead in some degrees; GAP was one of the four degrees of the UB that resorted to the pilot experience since the beginning.

GAP is a university diploma, of 184 credits, which offers the Faculty of Law of the University of Barcelona. Its purpose is to form managers of middle degree, from an interdisciplinary and general approach, to work preferably in the public or para-public sector.

The paper will focus on the process followed to adapt the GAP diploma to the ESHE. We have worked on two main issues. On the one hand, the transformation of the teaching methodology, linked to the introduction of the European system of credits; on the other hand, the restructuring of the curriculum. Nevertheless, other actions have been promoted for the improvement of the quality of the teaching, such as the Tutorial action plan or the Course of introduction to the diploma for the students of new access.

On the question of transforming teaching methodology, it has been a consequence of the introduction of European credit transfer system, based on the measure of the amount of hours of students work. In 2004 the Group of Educational Innovation linked to the diploma of Administration and Public Management (GID-GAP) was created and became the platform to share some experiences developed and to promote joint initiatives.

The most important decisions and actions adopted were:

- The numerical equivalence among the credits existent and the new ECTS.
- The agreement of a ratio of 25 hours of student work for each credit.
- The distribution of the student work, for each subject, among hours in class, directed work hours and autonomous learning hours. A general experience for counting the whole dedication of the students to the different subjects has been developed.
- Teaching plans for each subject have been drawn up, since 2005-06, which contain the goals of learning and the definition of the methodology of work and the evaluation strategy more suitable to attain them, apart from the contents and the main related information sources.
- Virtual Campus is being used by some pioneer teachers.

Related to the restructuring of the curriculum, the innovation group leaded a reflection on the consistency of the curriculum with the goals of formation, to identify the strong points and weak points which it would be necessary to reinforce or to correct, respectively. On the basis of this reflection a proposal of degree has been elaborated in order to be implemented next academic year 2009-10.

Keywords:

innovation, ects, experiment, ehea.