A PROPOSAL FOR THE COMPREHENSIVE MANAGEMENT OF BACHELOR FINAL PROJECTS

Resumo

The work of university professors is becoming increasingly complex as they are required to engage in diverse areas, such as research, pedagogical training necessary to keep up with innovations in teaching, and teaching itself (teaching-learning process and academic management). These circumstances greatly hinder the specialisation of teachers. Moreover, maintaining the quality of results becomes more difficult without sufficient resources. Nowadays, this issue takes on even more urgency due to the significant uncertainty haunting higher education and its funding. Moreover, Royal Decree 1393/2007 of 29 October, regulating the organisation and planning of official higher education in Spain, establishes that all official degrees must culminate in the preparation and defence of a Bachelor Final Project. This mandate represented an innovation for many university degrees. However, preparing an end-of-course project has been the traditional way of concluding a higher education degree in the field of Industrial Engineering. Therefore, our experience and background can be of use in that it can contribute to various coherent, effective, and real proposals in this regard. This article presents a proposal for the Comprehensive Management of Bachelor Final Projects. This method is simple, effective and adapted to current circumstances. The primary objective is to cover the multiple dimensions of a professors' working reality, while also aiming to reduce the time devoted to project supervision. There are vast discrepancies between the amount of time devoted by advising professors and the allocation of teaching loads. The former exceeds the latter by more than double even in the most ideal situations. This proposal has been developed based on simple solutions, which were strategically selected and adequately justified. The management system also takes into consideration the foremost milestones in the final project process, from choosing the topic and enrolment, to evaluation and defence, also including other aspects such as design, monitoring, and regulations.