Final Report Pilot Project - Phase 1

elow), the final year thesis work, the comprehensive exam(s), etc. Thecore content focuses on the «minimal» contents, which identify anydegree course. The other essential elements —rather— are structuralconstraints, which may be satisfied by a variety of contents. Theiroccurrence in the curriculum and their actual content depends on a largeextent on the institution/country and —quite often— on the student’schoice.Many possible essential elements are listed below. They are somewhatindependent from each other and their proper and coherent mix yieldsthe course curriculum. They are:—Core content 11 ;—Choice(s) from list(s), i.e. course units, which can be chosen bythe student from one or more predefined list(s);—Free not-structured choice or Completely free choice, i.e. courseunits, which are totally left to the free choice of the student;—Final project/thesis work;—Other essential elements [comprehensive exam(s); intermediateproject work; compulsory seminar, stage or placement;…].Sometimes the local teaching authority «strongly recommends» toattend units, which are not compulsory. This is a kind of «soft »compulsory element.The Physics Tuning Network made a «Consultation about corecontents and other essential elements», which yielded some tables,where examples are given about how all these elements can be puttogether. These tables are shown in the Annex I. The Physics Tuningpartners were asked for detailed information about the courseunits/activities in their institution, trying to identify what is compulsory,i.e. both in terms of contents and of the other elements. From theconsultation, it appears that some of the essential elements are presentin almost all the institutions of the Physics Tuning Network. These maybe named common essential elements. The core content is bydefinition an essential (and compulsory!) element everywhere. Anotherquite usual compulsory essential element is the final year project. Athorough discussion of the results and features, which can be extractedfrom the just quoted tables is given below.11See possible definitions below. We here make the choice of not using theterminology «core units» which may be ambiguous for several reasons (the same titleoften corresponds to different contents and/or level; the unit may have a differentlength in terms of credits depending on the institution, etc.).186