The Education Research Symposium was held from 6th to 8th December 2017 at the Oxford University’s Hugh’s College. The aim of this symposium was to share the research results in the field of teaching on a global scale. Participant universities came from South Africa, Canada, China, Israel, United States, Ukraine and England.

Big Data and Realistic Research were the key topics discussed throughout the symposium. The following topics were also discussed:

• Education based on positive values ​​(commitment, love, compassion, etc.) and modelling in character education.
• Diagnose research of the educational situation in South Africa.
• Research on the development of teachers and their discontent: A South-African study showed that the importance teachers give to time and money strongly disfavours their career development.
• Canada presented a study about the importance of collaborative and cooperative work as opposed to individualism. The conclusion is that in cooperative teaching one learns more and in a more efficient and less competitive way.
• Studies about identity and autonomy.

The CLIK’s presentation displayed the results of a semiqualitative research regarding the UPF’s tutorial action from 2011 to 2016, the so-called ACTE Programme. The results referred to survey answers of 6.5% of the ACTE Programme students and 50% of the tutors. Only 49.8% of the students knew about the tutoring programme and 41.5% of these had participated in the programme themselves. In any case, 86% of the participants were highly satisfied with the university’s tutoring plan. The level of satisfaction among tutors was also very significant: 82.11% would recommend the tutorial action to other fellows and 94% of the tutors consider that UPF should definitely have a tutoring programme.

On the other side, some other results indicate that 27.87% of tutors had not been in contact with their students and 66.34% of students claimed that their tutor had never contacted them.

In the light of these results we consider that the UPF’s tutoring programme still needs some changes and improvements, although it is very well evaluated by its participants.

For more information on the UPF’s tutoring programme see: ACTE UPF