José Ángel Sánchez

Modeling the best practices towards the adaptation to the European credit transfer system in technical degrees within the IEEE ES chapter

Several Spanish universities have started their process of adaptation towards a common educational space as a first stage towards the implementation of the credit system as established by the regulation prior to 2010. These universities have developed several highly- illuminating experiences which could be useful to those teachers and institutions who have no previous references and models to develop new experiences of ECTS adaptation. To help these scholars and universities this paper reports on a project that has been recently completed and which has been supported by the Spanish Government and by the participation to the Spanish Chapter of IEEE Education Society. More specifically, the paper provides details about the management of the project, namely, details about the contributions of its three working groups, as well as the different tasks carried out and their monitoring. The paper also describes the results obtained with the project and provides assessment on previous pilot experiences presented by Spanish university teachers at Engineering Education Conferences as well as on the experiences compiled through the projects Web site.

A review of the Accreditation Bodies and Processes in Europe. A vision from the Engineering

Europe has taken the decision of strengthening its cultural links after the successful implementation of the economic union. Many of the states reached the compromise of coordinating their educational policies to create a European higher education space and to promote the mobility of their citizens. Universities play a relevant role in this process. Quality has been considered as an international determinant factor of the competitiveness of Europe. The instrument chosen has been the accreditation of the quality, as in other geographical areas or countries as the USA. This paper analyses the European process to reach the accreditation, the involved agents (like the ENQA European Network for Quality Assurance, and the ECA European Consortium for Accreditation), along with the role of the quality national agencies, as the ANECA (Spanish National Agency for Accreditation) in the Spanish case

Work in Progress: Modeling the best practices of adaptation to European credit transfer system in technical teachings as improvement to the mobility of students

European countries face significant challenges in crossing international, cultural, and social borders building the common space for higher education. The key in this process, to promote the mobility of the students is the implantation of the European credit transfer system (ECTS). The Spanish universities have begun their process of adaptation of unequal way, with the obligation, in any case, to adapt to the system of credits established in its normative prior to 2010. It is at the present moment, with its forced implementation, when universities require knowing the best practices of adaptation. Some universities have begun with some experiences but all of them look for references of how to do it. This task is not trivial. The objectives for the WIP here presented are to establish a description model of experiences of adaptation on credits ECTS that allows the comparison of all of them and to compile and organize experiences. Later, it will be developed a Web site to disseminate the best experiences

Engineering education research in Spain: A review through the education awards of CESEI — IEEE

In this paper, a review of the educational research that is being developed in Spain is realized in the areas of Electrical, Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics through the works presented to the prizes CESEI (Spanish Chapter of the Education Society of the IEEE) in his three editions. There are two categories of candidates to the prizes, one for the Doctoral Thesis and the second for the Final Degree (or Master) Projects. An analysis of the working areas, the subjects covered as well as the conferences and journals where the results are published has been done. The main goal of this paper is to have a general vision about the work done in such areas of educational research in Spain that will be very interesting for academic staff and researchers.

Use of e-learning functionalities: Results of a survey along Spain

This paper shows the results of a survey performed in Spain about the different functionalities of e-learning platforms. This survey was filled in by a group of teachers, experts in Engineering Education along all Spain, through the Spanish Chapter of the IEEE Education Society. The paper shows the opinion on several aspects about the e-learning functionalities, such as knowledge level, usage level, usefulness, etc., as well as the most used platforms. One of the objectives of this work is to create a reflexive debate in the international community about the e-Learning platform use.

Practice and research in engineering education: Activities of the CESEI Technical Committee

This paper shows the activities of the Technical Committee of the CESEI (Spanish Chapter of the IEEE Education Society). The CESEI is focused on the development of the education in engineering, mainly Electric and Computer Engineering, and the Technical Committee is devoted to contribute to its awareness and dissemination. As in other interdisciplinary fields, the engineering education field involves several sources of information and different stakeholders, each one with its own focus and purpose. As a result, sometimes it may be complex for practitioners and researchers to identify the more appropriate entities for their interests. The CESEI Technical Committee tries to solve this difficulty by providing updated information about the main publications (journals), events (conferences), organizations and other elements of interest.