Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

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Accreditation (in the sequel ANECA) or different surveys carried out with international
experts related to multinational teaching environments (Fernandez et to., 2011), etc.
Outputs of the system
The principal output of this system remains demonstrated by the impact of the graduates
in the society, fact that it is possible to see from two points of view. The first one bears in
mind what profile the graduate has developed in his/her training as Computer Engineer
according to the professional profile established in the program, whereas the second one
projects more towards what the graduate does in his/her job, that has also remained
defined in the corresponding occupational profile.
These outputs are gathered by means of a few indicators. They gather information from a
particular job environment and from professional associations in general, which offer
useful information to do the analysis "plan vs. real" from the head of the program. The
same operating way becomes evident in feedbacks of employers and of graduates.
As a result, corrective actions can arise in order that the gap between that really perceived
by graduates and the planned from the formative process of the program (professional
and occupational profiles, respectively) goes towards harmony. This tries to tune
dynamically both profiles to accomplish two goals at least: the first one, an appropriate
adaptation to his/her socioeconomic context being transformation agents of society
(relevancy competences), and the second one, the integral education university gives them
as people (identity competences). There must be a feedback in the formative process
taking into account the most significant findings in the profiles evaluation and validation
process.
Management and continuous improvement in curriculum
To consolidate the continuous improvement process, the authors propose to follow the
“continuous improvement spiral” (also known as the “Sheward cycle” or “PDCA cycle”).
This model consists of a logical sequence of four repetitive steps for continuous
improvement: P (Plan), D (Do), C (Check), and A (Action). The experience of the
organizations has showed that is possible to manage any type of process efficiently like
this. This kind of feedback mechanism has been previously used in engineering education
(Plaza et al., 2006). The study has been carried out taking into account the degree of
Computing Engineering, but it can be easily extrapolated to other engineering degrees.
According to the elements described above, the curriculum of the program from the
processes approach allows us to rely on an information and feedback system especially
useful in the involved taking-decision processes. In particular, it tries to facilitate the
decisions related to: a) students entering the program and their profiles, b) graduates of
the program and their profiles, c) measures of the performance of the formative process
and its continuous improvement. For each of them, this approach allows to carry out
solidly at least the following functions, typical from the curricular management: to identify
the period of achievements of results, to identify the corrective and preventive actions as
well as to have a feedback channel.
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011