Final Report Pilot Project - Phase 1

Line 4Approaches to Teaching and Learning,Assessment and Performance, and QualityThe underlying reasons for undertaking a project such as Tuning,and indeed, the strong impulse behind the Bologna-Prague process, isthe realisation that the young people of Europe must be culturally andintellectually equipped in new ways in order to construct meaningfulsatisfying lives, personally and collectively. Quality, in final analysis,means the degree of success of European higher education in creatingenvironments suitable to the creation and transfer of both disciplinespecificand generic knowledge and competences to new generationsand new kinds of learners.In our view, institutions of higher education in general, and theUniversities in particular, have a key role in developing appropriatestrategies to accomplish this and in implementing them. This is not atheoretical judgement. It is a practical fact. The Universities haveprimary responsibility for using their knowledge, their tradition andtheir capacity for innovation in order to prepare the future of Europe.Universities, if they use it, have the capacity to act as protagonists inpreparing students for a productive working career and for citizenship.Tuning shows some very interesting things. Universities are experts intransferring disciplinary knowledge. Employers, graduates and academicsagree on this. Equally, however, it is clear that the requirements of a mobile,rapidly changing society are such that students, whatever their age, need todevelop general capabilities: along with their knowledge. They need todevelop personal qualities which will allow them during their lifetimes tolearn further, to teach or communicate what they know and to use theirknowledge in many ways which we can only dimly imagine today.49