Accreditation

Accreditation is achieved through a process of assessment that checks whether a degree meets established criteria and standards, ensuring that the results from training are appropriate.  Accreditation also aims at ensuring that the competences acquired by students are the competences needed in the labour market and society as a whole.  The assessment process is conducted by an assessment body that analytically and systemically evaluates the quality of an institutional or professional program to determine how well the program fulfils its objectives, standards, functions or aims.  Then the assessment body prepares conclusions and recommendations based on the established criteria. 

Accreditation can involve an ex ante process of verification and subsequent monitoring of implementation and results.   Ex post accreditation, which occurs after implementation, is based on verification of the fulfilment of the project goals submitted by the university and it requires a report and decision from the competent agency. 

Adaptation

Adaptation is a process by which a student enrolled in a diploma, former undergraduate degree or engineering degree can change to the new bachelor’s degree which replaces it.   

Assessment

Assessment is a systematic process of data collection aimed at drawing a conclusion on the value of an object or subject.  Assessment is a key tool used in making decision.  (See also Continuous Assessment.)

EHEA Bachelor’s Degree

The new EHEA bachelor’s degree is an official degree which requires a student to complete 240 credits and enables the student to enter into professional practice by providing basic general knowledge, specific knowledge of a vocational nature and transferable knowledge related to basic quality of life.  As the first cycle of university studies, a bachelor’s degree is basic in nature, providing general and professional training.  The aim is to enable students to obtain adequate qualifications to enter directly into the European labour market.

Continuous Assessment

Continuous assessment is a process to evaluate student progress by monitoring the student’s work on an ongoing basis, so that any necessary changes can be introduced immediately in order to optimize the process and improve the results. Continuous assessment serves two functions:  it gives teaching staff information to make decisions that can improve a student’s learning and it provides students with information to help them in making decisions about their own learning process.

More specifically, continuous assessment is intended to assist teaching staff in identifying student errors or obstacles that may be impeding learning, student success strategies and student progress.  Continuous assessment is intended to assist students by providing motivation, encouraging student reflection about the knowledge they have already acquired, enabling students to manage their own mistakes, increasing student awareness of the reasons behind their learning successes, providing students with information to make decisions about their own learning process, encouraging students to draw their learning together broadly, and making students more aware of what they have learned and what they have not learned.  Continuous assessment does not involve taking a greater or lesser number of tests or requiring a greater or lesser number of papers or projects.  It involves gathering information on the learning process to help both teaching faculty and students to take decisions to improve the process.  (See also Assessment.)

Diploma Supplement

The Diploma Supplement—referred to in Catalan and Spanish as the Suplement Europeu del Títol and the Suplemento Europeo de Título respectively—is a document attached to each graduate’s original degree, designed to provide a description of the nature, level, context, content and status of the studies that were pursued and successfully completed by the holder of the qualification.  The supplement, which includes all of the graduate’s academic and professional training, accompanies the degree throughout the graduate’s training.  It aims at improving the transparency and the academic/professional recognition of qualifications among the member states of the European Union.  In addition to academic and professional information on the studies pursued by the graduate, it describes the national context and the professional competences and capabilities acquired, reflecting all the credits obtained by the student in any official courses taken in any university, including transfer credits, recognized credits and completed credits obtained for the degree involved. 

Doctorate

A doctorate is a postgraduate study program which has as a general admission criterion the completion of an official master’s degree, which is the teaching phase of the doctorate.  The master’s degree enables a student to seek admission to a doctoral program, which is the research phase leading to a doctoral thesis.

ECTS Credits

The European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) measures the amount of work that students must do or have done to acquire the knowledge and capabilities required to complete the various subjectes or study areas in their degree.  ECTS credits quantify the workload required of students to meet educational objectives.  At the UB, each ECTS credit is equivalent to 25 hours of student work, including work in the classroom (e.g., class attendance, seminars, laboratory work and classroom assessment), directed non-classroom work and tutorials, and autonomous student work.

Erasmus

Erasmus is the main student exchange program in Europe.  Part of the Socrates program, Erasmus is intended to improve the quality of higher education and strengthen its European dimension by encouraging transnational cooperation among universities, promoting European mobility and enhancing the transparency and academic recognition of studies and qualifications across the European Union.  

Erasmus-Mundus

Erasmus-Mundus is a European Union program promoting cooperation and mobility in higher education with institutions outside the EU.  Its aim is to highlight the quality of higher education in Europe and to foster intercultural understanding.  The program provides funding to enable students and teaching faculty from around the world to enrol in high-quality European master’s programs.  It also provides funding to European university students to pursue studies outside the EU.     

Module

A module is a group of subjects used for planning, execution and assessment.  It establishes the sequence of the education to be taken by the student.  

Official Master’s Degree

An official master’s degree constitutes the second cycle of the new university studies.  It offers a higher level of training, providing specialized training both in a specific area of knowledge and in inter-disciplinary areas in order to improve specific competencies in a professional or academic field.  Research is one of the professional fields that may be addressed, so an official master’s degree can serve as part of the training leading to a doctorate.  Master’s degrees require 60-120 ECTS credits.  They provide advanced training, which may be specialized or multi-disciplinary.  A student may pursue an academic, professional or research specialization.  A large number of master’s programs are offered jointly by more than one faculty or school.  Some are inter-university degrees offered jointly by the UB and other universities.

Recognition of Credits

The recognition of credits is a key factor in the success of the Erasmus/Socrates student exchange programs.  Recognition is based on the equivalence of a period of study in a host university (including exams and other assessment methods) with a comparable period of study in the student’s home university (including exams and other assessment methods), although there may be some differences in what is studied.  Recognition will be built into the new degrees, so that any credits obtained in official subjects within the same university or at other universities can be used towards the acquisition of an official degree.  

Study Area

A study area is the basic unit of a curriculum.   It specifies the competences that must be acquired by the student, the learning content, and the methodology and assessment criteria.   Each study area will have a set number of credits and it may be either compulsory or optional in nature.  For the purposes of planning, execution and teaching assessment, each study area will consist of various subjects.   

Teaching Plan

A teaching plan is a public document which specifies the aims of a subject, how the study area will be taught to achieve those aims, and how students will be assessed.  It reflects an intermediate level of planning between a curriculum and asubject syllabus, when and where this structure is present.  Teaching plans must first be approved by the university department in which the subject is taught.  Then approval must be obtained from studies council or master’s committee.  A teaching plan must contain sufficient information so that teaching staff can identify and distribute criteria and so that the document can be made public and students can use it as a point of reference.  As a result, a teaching plan needs to specify the aims of the course unit (the “what”), the methodology to be used (the “how”), and the system and characteristics of assessment. 

Teaching Team

A teaching team is a group of teaching staff who work together or in a coordinated manner to plan, execute and assess education.  A team may share the same subject, the teaching of the same group of students, or subjects related by subject matter or discipline. 

Verification

Verification is a process that enables universities to apply for authorization to offer a bachelor’s degree or master’s degree from the Council of Universities.  The Council of Universities grants authorization if a favourable report is provided by the Spanish National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA).  A degree cannot be offered before it has successfully completed the process of verification.