Final Report Pilot Project - Relaciones Internacionales de la ...

technical skills, writing papers of increasing difficulty, reading papers,
learning how to give constructive criticism on the work of others,
chairing meetings (of seminar groups, for example), working under
time pressure, co-producing papers, presenting papers, making précis
or summarising, doing laboratory or practical exercises, fieldwork,
personal study.
As part of Tuning the seven subject areas have held intensive
discussions to reach consensus concerning the issue of subject-related
competences for their discipline. Each of the groups has written a report
with their findings, which is included in part II of this final report of the
first phase of the Tuning project. 2 Although the approaches have been
very different, due to type of discipline, all groups have followed more or
less the same procedure. Four phases of development can be recognised:
In Phase 1 the group members informed each other about the
present situation in their institutions, the type of programmes being
designed as well as future perspectives. Furthermore, subject area
groups studied relevant so-called benchmark papers prepared for the
British Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) by experts from the British
Higher Education world. These papers not only give a description of the
bachelor programme of an area but also identify learning outcomes and
relevant competences for that area. In addition the groups also tried to
map the territory of their discipline. Although, for the first phase of the
Tuning project only traditional disciplines were selected, these fields
proved less mono-disciplinary than one might expect. In the groups
different problems were brought forward. The definitions of a discipline
proved to a certain extent to be nationally based. Also the role of
related disciplines in the programmes differs from country to country
and from institution to institution. Furthermore, for example in the field
of History, different student audiences could be identified. Students
who take the field as their major and others as their minor or as part of
a degree in which History studies have a relevant part.
Phase 2 was characterised by intense discussions and exchange of
opinions. These concentrated on the question whether it would be
possible to define a «core curriculum». The term itself proved to be very
open to discussion, because at present it means, or is taken to mean
widely different things in different contexts, not only at country level
but also at disciplinary level. All groups tried to identify the differences
and analogies in the present systems, as well as in the programmes of
2 Initial reports have been published on the Website of the Tuning project:
www.relint.deusto.es/TuningProject/index.htm or www.let.rug.nl/TuningProject/index.htm
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