Session T3E 978-1-4244-1970-8/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE October 22 – 25, 2008, Saratoga Springs, NY 38 th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference T3E-21 A Coordination Protocol for Higher Education Degrees Andrés Terrasa, Eduardo Vendrell, and Emilio Sanchis Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, aterrasa@dsic.upv.es, even@isa.upv.es, esanchis@dsic.upv.es Abstract - When a higher education institution creates a new curriculum for a given degree, the design process itself ensures a correct balance and coordination among the subjects in the degree, not only about the contents and learning outcomes of each subject, but also in the learning weight of all the subjects in each semester. However, it is common that, as time goes on, the degree evolves. This evolution may be produced, for example, in order to cope with scientific or technological advances, or simply because teachers may favor the contents, methodologies, assessment techniques, etc., which they know best. The problem is that this evolution is normally carried out in the context of each individual subject, which progressively makes the entire curriculum to lose its initial balance. This paper introduces a coordination protocol designed to regain the balance among the subjects in a degree, while this degree is being taught. Index Terms - Coordination protocol, Higher education degree, Curriculum design, Teaching collaboration. INTRODUCTION Before a higher education degree can be put into practice, a program or curriculum must be designed for it. The design of a degree program takes into account several aspects with the overall goal of giving students the qualification they need to obtain the degree. Such aspects normally include, among others, the expected learning outcomes of the students (in terms of knowledge, skills, competences) and the required teaching and learning effort that students need in order to successfully obtain the qualification. For example, in the computing-related fields, many degrees are designed according to the guidelines of the Computing Curricula project [1], jointly developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). The result of the design phase for a given degree (that is, its curriculum) is basically a list of courses, structured in semesters and/or academic years, with each course described in some detail. The level of detail in the course description depends on the institution that designs the degree, according to aspects such as the institution’s traditions and norms, the country or regional regulations, etc. If the curriculum is well designed, the actual structure of courses ensures two main objectives: on the one hand, courses are correctly sequenced and coordinated (learning outcomes acquired in previous courses prepare students to successfully deal with later courses); on the other hand, the learning effort required by students to pass the courses in each semester/year is balanced, in order to get a reasonable upper limit of working hours. However, independently of how well designed, any degree is prone to suffer some deviations in the two objectives mentioned above (course coordination and effort balance) after it has been taught for some time. This is because degrees evolve in time. Some times, the evolution is necessary, for example in order to cope with scientific or technological advances; some other times, the evolution is produced because the same course is assigned to different teachers, and each one favors the particular contents, methodologies, assessment techniques, etc., the teacher knows best. In any case, the problem with this evolution is that it is normally produced in the context of each individual subject, which progressively makes the entire curriculum to lose its initial coordination and balance. This paper presents a coordination protocol designed to regain the balance among the subjects in a degree, while this degree is being taught. The protocol is founded in four major tasks: horizontal coordination of subjects, vertical coordination of subjects, student effort analysis and development of teaching guides. The protocol proposes to have a few teachers specially appointed to guide the process, but it also requires an active participation of all teachers in the degree. If so, all tasks in the protocol can be applied in a single academic year. The coordination protocol is the result of our experience in the context of an institutional project called PACE (Action Plan for the European Convergence), promoted by the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (UPV). The final goal of this project is to prepare the members and institutions inside our University to the new European Higher Education Area (EHEA). In particular, the protocol has been developed for the current degrees of the Faculty of Computer Science at the UPV. THE PACE PROJECT Over the last few years, the Action Plan for the European Convergence (PACE) project [2] has been the institutional framework promoted by the UPV to involve schools and faculties in teaching innovation. In essence, the PACE project is a general framework which covers all possible actions in order to promote both teaching excellence and the