A Proposal for the Description of Individual Course Units

Authors

  • Joao Paulo Barros Instituto Politecnico de Beja and UNINOVA-CTS
  • Luís Gomes Universidade Nova de Lisboa and UNINOVA-CTS
  • Luís Garcia Instituto Politécnico de Beja

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v3iS1.2420

Keywords:

course description, learning outcomes, assessment, grading, ECTS, alignment, curricula design, EQF

Abstract


The description of individual course units is here presented as a privileged way to improve course quality by fostering teacher reflection. To that end, the paper presents a structured way to specify the several parts that compose the course unit descriptions.  The most important parts are made strongly interconnected as a way to maximize coherence and force additional reflection during course design. The paper presents a concrete template that expands the recommendations and course unit data present in the ECTS User’s Guide. Besides including the usual course data, the template guides the course designer towards the specification of several alignments between the data. These alignments make the course unit descriptions self justifying and internally coherent. Additionally,, a grading strategy is briefly presented and the intended learning outcomes are classified according to the European Qualification Framework for Lifelong Learning.

Author Biographies

Joao Paulo Barros, Instituto Politecnico de Beja and UNINOVA-CTS

Professor at Instituto Politécnico de Beja - Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão 

and researcher at

UNINOVA-CTS

Luís Gomes, Universidade Nova de Lisboa and UNINOVA-CTS

Professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa - Faculty of Sciences and Technology

 and researcher at

UNINOVA-CTS

Luís Garcia, Instituto Politécnico de Beja

Professor at Instituto Politécnico de Beja - Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão 

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Published

2013-02-09

How to Cite

Barros, J. P., Gomes, L., & Garcia, L. (2013). A Proposal for the Description of Individual Course Units. International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP), 3(S1), pp. 71–75. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v3iS1.2420