Connecting University to labour market needs. Bringing practices from Finland

La política Europea pone cada vez más énfasis en el acercamiento de los programas universitarios a las necesidades del entorno laboral y social. Sin embargo, el sistema de educación superior español parece muy lejano a estos requerimientos. Como consecuencia de esto, puede apreciarse que la tasa de desempleo entre sus titulados es de las más elevadas. En contraste, las los programas de las universidades de Ciencias Aplicadas de Finlandia, que cuentan entre sus requisitos el establecimiento de relaciones permanentes con el mercado laboral del entorno muestran tasas muy inferiores. Así, el objetivo de este trabajo es realizar un análisis en profundidad de las estrategias seguidas por dichas universidades para conectar las necesidades sociales y laborales con las aulas así como los elementos estructurales que facilitan y dificultan su puesta en marcha. La técnica de recogida de información ha sido el análisis documental y las entrevistas a los principales agentes a través del estudio de nueve universidades de ciencias aplicadas finlandesas. Para la organización de los resultados se ha seguido el modelo de los tres pilares (3p) básicos para el diseño de planes de estudio integrados: organizaciones Participantes, Estructura del Programa y Personas implicadas. Los principales resultados nos muestran estrategias de actuación que pueden ser transferibles y aplicables al sistema universitario español, si bien todo parece venir definido por una incorrecta aplicación de los principios del EEES en nuestro contexto.The European policy puts increasing emphasis in linking university programmes to social and labour needs. Nevertheless, the Spanish Higher Education seems to be far away these requirements. As consequence of this, it can be appreciated that the rate of unemployment among graduates is higher than the rest of Europe. In contrast, Finnish Higher Education programmes in Universities of Applied Sciences, which require the establishment of permanent relations with the labour market show very low rates. Thus, the aim of this work is to carry out an analysis of the strategies followed by the Finnish universities of Applied Sciences to connect the social and labour needs to university classrooms as well as the structural elements that facilitate or jeopardize their implementation. Research Methodology has been documental analysis and the interviews to the principal agents from nine Finnish Universities of Applied sciences. Results have been organized following the 3p framework for the design of integrated university curriculum: Participant organizations, Programme structure and People involved. Main results show practices that can be transferable and applicable to the Spanish Higher Education system, though everything seems to come defined by an incorrect application of the EHEA principles in our context

Translation of Pronominal Anaphora between English and Spanish: Discrepancies and Evaluation

This paper evaluates the different tasks carried out in the translation of pronominal anaphora in a machine translation (MT) system. The MT interlingua approach named AGIR (Anaphora Generation with an Interlingua Representation) improves upon other proposals presented to date because it is able to translate intersentential anaphors, detect co-reference chains, and translate Spanish zero pronouns into English---issues hardly considered by other systems. The paper presents the resolution and evaluation of these anaphora problems in AGIR with the use of different kinds of knowledge (lexical, morphological, syntactic, and semantic). The translation of English and Spanish anaphoric third-person personal pronouns (including Spanish zero pronouns) into the target language has been evaluated on unrestricted corpora. We have obtained a precision of 80.4% and 84.8% in the translation of Spanish and English pronouns, respectively. Although we have only studied the Spanish and English languages, our approach can be easily extended to other languages such as Portuguese, Italian, or Japanese

Breeding numerous forestry varieties for agroforestry lines: renewing previous methods

Poste

Student work-placements from the company perspective. A case study

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to report the motivations and perceived benefits of companies that collaborate with universities by offering student work-placement positions. Methodology: The study follows a mixed methodology based on i) a literature review on the topic, ii) a case study survey including companies that collaborate with one Spanish university in student work-placements and iii) meetings with collaborating companies in different countries and universities. Findings: The most important reasons for collaborating in student work-placements were related to social duty, the opportunity of training students in company needs and as a source of staff recruitment. Conversely, the less rated motivators were improving the company’s position within the sector, benefitting from university services and saving time in the selection of personnel. Research limitations: Future research should include a bigger corpus of the number of universities and companies, as well as the type of collaborations with universities, in order to identify any resulting differences. Practical implications: The conclusions highlight the need to define/improve the mechanisms that contribute to a win-win context. This is the only way that collaboration can advance towards a genuine partnership that will provide an effective framework for universities and companies to effectively share the same objectives in training future employees. Originality: These results are relevant because of the lack of quantitative and qualitative research on this topic

Construcción y validación de un cuestionario de actitudes hacia la innovación educativa en la universidad

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo la construcción de un cuestionario para valorar las actitudes del estudiantado y el profesorado universitario frente a la innovación educativa en la universidad (QUACINE). En su diseño y elaboración partimos de la teoría de la acción razonada de Fishbein y Ajzen como modelo de análisis actitudinal, y de las escalas sumativas (Likert) como instrumento de medida. El cuestionario se administró a dos grupos de profesorado y estudiantado de la Universitat Jaume I de Castellón (España). A partir de los resultados obtenidos en el proceso de validación se presenta una escala actitudinal con niveles altos de fiabilidad, de validez de contenido y de constructo, para ambos colectivos. Consideramos que estas características técnicas permiten la utilización del QUACINE para medir estas actitudes en los procesos de cambio y mejora educativa en la enseñanza superior.The aim of this paper is to construct a questionnaire to evaluate the attitudes of students and faculty with regard to educational innovation in the university (QUACINE). Its design and development was based on Fishbein and Ajzen’s theory of reasoned action as a model of attitudinal analysis, and the use of Likert scales as a measuring tool. The questionnaire was administered to two groups of faculty and students at the Universitat Jaume I of Castellón (Spain). The results obtained in the validation process generated an attitudinal scale with high levels of reliability, content and construct validity for both groups. We believe that these technical characteristics allow the use of the QUACINE to measure these attitudes in processes of change and improvement of educational processes in higher education.Este trabajo es continuación de un proyecto I+D anterior (Cod: P1 1B2007-53) subvencionado por BancaixaUniversitat Jaume I. Castellón (España)

Estudio de la valorización de residuos de almendra para paneles de bajo coste

Debido a los problemas ambientales se está incrementando el uso de recursos renovables y ecológicos y ha aumentado la investigación sobre el uso de fibras vegetales en el desarrollo de nuevos productos. El almendro es un árbol caducifolio originario de las zonas mediterráneas, aunque actualmente Estados Unidos es el principal productor de almendras del mundo. El fruto del almendro tiene tres partes distintas: el núcleo interno o la carne, la parte media dura de la cáscara y la cubierta o casco exterior de la cáscara verde (exocarpo y mesocarpo). En este trabajo se discute el uso de un  residuo como es la parte verde exterior de la almendra y obtener un nuevo producto ecológico. Se ha usado como materia prima el exocarpo de la almendra triturado, obteniendo 4 tamaños de partículas. Se han elaborado 8 tipos tableros. No se utilizó ningún tipo de adhesivo. Los tableros eran de una sola capa. Las mantas se consolidaron después de 1 y 2 ciclos de prensado en caliente a 120ºC y bajo una presión de 2.5 MPa. Los paneles experimentales se ensayaron de acuerdo con los procedimientos definidos por los estándares de la Unión Europea (EN). Los tableros eran de alta densidad. Se evaluó el efecto del tamaño de las partículas utilizadas en la elaboración de los tableros en algunas propiedades físicas y mecánicas (módulo de elasticidad, módulo de ruptura y fuerza de unión interna). Los resultados mostraron menores valores MOR, MOE, IB y menor hinchamiento en espesor después del segundo ciclo de prensado. Los tableros tenían un valor medio de IB alto. La resistencia a la flexión dependía del tamaño de partícula utilizado. Son tableros de alta dureza, por lo que podrían utilizarse para entarimado. Este estudio demuestra que es técnicamente posible el desarrollo de tableros con este material.Keywords: Tableros de partículas; exocarpo; Prunus dulcis (Mill) D.A; libre de adhesivos

Communication skills training in undergraduate nursing programs in Spain

Objectives of the present cross sectional study were to analyze the offer of subjects with communication skills in the nursing degree in Spain and to describe the distribution of these subjects. Documentary, systematic and independent search of web pages from Spanish universities was carried out to collect the following variables: subjects with communication skills, course in which the subject is taught, type of teaching (exclusive or combined), type of subject (compulsory or optional) and number of credits on communication skills. Although an average of 3.6 subjects per center was offered, most of the subjects were combined and with little communication content load. In one third of the centers, the offer was below 2.3 credits. Only 1 in 6 centers had exclusive communication skills subjects, and a quarter of them were optional. The teaching load of communication contents was highest in optional subjects. The offer of communication skills contents in Spanish Nursing Schools was scarce and very heterogeneous between centers and between courses in a center, with excessive presence of combined and optional subjects. Our results may be useful when developing the teaching guides for subjects with communication skills, as well as when defining communication competencies in the different Nursing Schools