Teaching strategies

To consolidate a unique education model:

With a flexible educational proposal that is unique to each student – with active learning models that encourage responsibility, afford them a more prominent role, and promote critical thinking – but also promotes collaborative work.

With motivated and innovative faculty who serve as guides and mentors to students. Faculty must receive the necessary support to allow them to address each student’s individualities, as well as appropriate and sufficient incentives to encourage and reward their teaching.

Combining research and teaching in the learning process, so that faculty involve their students in the university’s research activities. To this end, it is necessary to include specific skills  in bachelor’s degree subjects, link bachelor’s degree and master’s degree final projects to research groups, promote projects that make research a longitudinal priority, and aspire to make it possible for all faculty members to teach in undergraduate programmes.

Emphasizing communication skills as a general trait of UPF students, linked to the exercise of critical and reflective thinking and the ability to explain a personal or professional project, orally and in writing, in the university’s three working languages. All curricula should include subjects and methodologies that foster these skills.

Redefining face-to-face teaching in the learning process, so as to include the full range of possibilities technology offers today in order to separate the personal interactive and educational processes from processes of discovery and knowledge and to create new spaces for teaching. We must take advantage of all opportunities, both of face-to-face and online teaching and of hybrid methodologies and new models based on inverting the teacher and student roles.

Involving students in activities related to social commitment and in social projects integrated into teaching methodology and the learning process, and encouraging all students to engage in volunteering and social responsibility activities during their years at UPF.

To respond to the changing demand for quality education:

With innovative, quality degree programmes, which can be of interest to both local and foreign students, and striving to continually improve them in order to offer  the best possible education.

Promoting general skills in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes through a variety of initiatives, such as new interdisciplinary programmes, the inclusion of minors in very different disciplines, interdisciplinary final projects and greater curricular flexibility.

Offering students more opportunities to develop their talent, in a way that allows them to hone their skills  and that takes into account different learning speeds, in order to maintain and stimulate their motivation throughout the study cycle.

Attracting students from outside the EU, making a special effort to promote UPF’s bachelor’s degree programmes among these students, in order to fully  integrate them into the university’s core academic offerings and promote mobility and the resulting enrichment of the university environment.

Expanding postgraduate academic offerings, in order to attract a larger number of both national and international students, and enhancing the specialization tracks, professionalizing components and academic reputations of the master’s degree programmes.

Internationalizing the classroom with measures such as including new content in subjects, promoting both a strong oral and written command of the university’s three working languages and the learning of other foreign languages in addition to English, and promoting linguistic and cultural diversity in all spaces used for instruction.

Providing more support for graduate employment, with a broader selection of curricular and extracurricular internships and personalized support for students both during the acquisition of professional skills and in finding employment.