News in engineering education in Spain effective from 2010 in presence of external changes and mixed crisis, looking mostly to agro and civil engineers.

The engineering careers models were diverse in Europe, and are adopting now in Spain the Bolonia process for European Universities. Separated from older Universities, that are in part technically active, Civil Engineering (Caminos, Canales y Puertos) started at end of 18th century in Spain adopting the French models of Upper Schools for state civil servants with exam at entry. After 1800 intense wars, to conserve forest regions Ingenieros de Montes appeared as Upper School, and in 1855 also the Ingenieros Agrónomos to push up related techniques and practices. Other Engineers appeared as Upper Schools but more towards private factories. These ES got all adapted Lower Schools of Ingeniero Tecnico. Recently both grew much in number and evolved, linked also to recognized Professions. Spanish society, into European Community, evolved across year 2000, in part highly well, but with severe discordances, that caused severe youth unemployment with 2008-2011 crisis. With Bolonia process high formal changes step in from 2010-11, accepted with intense adaptation. The Lower Schools are changing towards the Upper Schools, and both that have shifted since 2010-11 various 4-years careers (Grado), some included into the precedent Professions, and diverse Masters. Acceptation of them to get students has started relatively well, and will evolve, and acceptation of new grades for employment in Spain, Europe or outside will be essential. Each Grado has now quite rigid curricula and programs, MOODLE was introduced to connect pupils, some specific uses of Personal Computers are taught in each subject. Escuela de Agronomos centre, reorganized with its old name in its precedent buildings at entrance of Campus Moncloa, offers Grados of Agronomic Engineering and Science for various public and private activities for agriculture, Alimentary Engineering for alimentary activities and control, Agro-Environmental Engineering more related to environment activities, and in part Biotechnology also in laboratories in Campus Monte-Gancedo for Biotechnology of Plants and Computational Biotechnology. Curricula include Basics, Engineering, Practices, Visits, English, ?project of end of career?, Stays. Some masters will conduce to specific professional diploma, list includes now Agro-Engineering, Agro-Forestal Biotechnology, Agro and Natural Resources Economy, Complex Physical Systems, Gardening and Landscaping, Rural Genie, Phytogenetic Resources, Plant Genetic Resources, Environmental Technology for Sustainable Agriculture, Technology for Human Development and Cooperation.

Anabolic drugs consumption of high school students participating in school championships of physical education

This paper aims to analyse the use of anabolic drugs among Greek students participating in school championships of physical education (PE). In order to do it, a survey was conducted during the 2008 to 2009 academic year in suburban, urban and metropolitan areas in Greece. The sample was 2,535 high school students from the 10 to 12th grade, participating in the school physical education championships. The results showed that 9.6% of boys and 3.7% of girls reported that they had used anabolic drugs sometime in the past whereas 11.2% boys and 4.8% girls reported that they would intend to use them in the future. This confirms that anabolic steroids are an important problem among adolescents, and educational programs should increase their knowledge about these drugs. Information should come not only from the state, but also from coaches, teachers, trainers and parents.

Knowledge Management and Leadership in the Higher Education: A First Approach

Today, it is more and more important to develop competences in the learning process of the university students (that is to say, to acquire knowledge but also skills, abilities, attitudes and values). This is because professional practice requires that the future graduates design and market products, defend the interests of their clients, be introduced in the Administration or, even, in the Politics. Universities must form professionals that become social and opinion leaders, consultants, advisory, entrepreneurs and, in short, people with capacity to solve problems. This paper offers a tool to evaluate the application for the professor of different styles of management in the process of the student’s learning. Its main contribution consists on advancing toward the setting in practice of a model that overcomes the limitations of the traditional practices based on the masterful class, and that it has been applied in Portugal and Spain.

Overview of international research in generic competence assessment

The competency assessment is a key issue for improving the quality of teaching and learning within the current European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The aim of this paper is to review the current research on assessment of generic competences, especially through online tools. It has conducted a search of the Web of Knowledge (Thomson Reuters) from keywords. It have been reviewed the abstracts and the results have been classified by time periods, countries and research area. It has selected a set of articles of the period 2010?2012, in which we have analyzed future trends. It is concluded that the research of assessment generic competences is been developing nowadays in educational area, although is still more important in the professional one. Additionally, it is surprising that appears most often used in preuniversity education levels. The academic context has increased research activities over the past five years, with different developments in the Anglo?Saxon countries over that those countries attached to the Bologna Process. The latest reports indicate that the learning competences must meet the individual reality of each person, so that the use of ICTs in their development and evaluation are essential given its immediacy and motivational ability. There is a clear trend towards an evaluation model that includes a 360º specific and generic competences analysis.

Building sustainable capacity for health research in africa through cloud computing applications

Access to information and continuous education represent critical factors for physicians and researchers over the world. For African professionals, this situation is even more problematic due to the frequently difficult access to technological infrastructures and basic information. Both education and information technologies (e.g., including hardware, software or networking) are expensive and unaffordable for many African professionals. Thus, the use of e-learning and an open approach to information exchange and software use have been already proposed to improve medical informatics issues in Africa. In this context, the AFRICA BUILD project, supported by the European Commission, aims to develop a virtual platform to provide access to a wide range of biomedical informatics and learning resources to professionals and researchers in Africa. A consortium of four African and four European partners work together in this initiative. In this framework, we have developed a prototype of a cloud-computing infrastructure to demonstrate, as a proof of concept, the feasibility of this approach. We have conducted the experiment in two different locations in Africa: Burundi and Egypt. As shown in this paper, technologies such as cloud computing and the use of open source medical software for a large range of case present significant challenges and opportunities for developing countries, such as many in Africa.

Campus of Excellence: The Power of Diversity in Engineering Education

This paper presents the results of a strategy to modernise the Spanish University system through the establishment of an International Campus of Excellence (CEI). The current, ambitious but realistic, project is a joint initiative of a number of institutions located in the Moncloa Campus, amongst them the Complutense and the Technical Universities, as well as CIEMAT, CSIC and INIA. The aim of the project is to transform the Moncloa Campus into an international point of reference with regard to research, education and innovation. This paper describes the project and presents the qualitative and quantitative results.

Including accessibility in higher education curricula for ICT

This paper describes the successful experience carried out by professors of the CETTICO research group of the Technical University of Madrid to incorporate accessibility in the curricula of higher education in ICT in Spain. The paper covers the legal requirements to include accessibility in curricula in Spain, the courses and modules that we have been teaching through the years and the teaching techniques and tools that we have been using.

New methodology on Applied Geology and Geology for Engineers education by using practical trip

There has been much discussion on the primacy of theory over practice. Today prevails the exaggeration of practice. This idea forgets too that teaching problem is a problem of right balance. The approach of the action lines on the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) framework provides for such balance. Applied Geology subject represents the first real contact with the physical environment with the practice profession and works. Besides, the situation of the topic in the first trace of Study Plans for many students implies the link to other subjects and topics of the career. This work analyses in depth the justification of such practical trips only on Applied Geology. This methodology could be usual in Study Plans of pure sciences career, Geology or Biology, but not in Civil Engineering like teaching method. It shows the criteria and methods of planning and the result which manifests itself in pupils. Therefore, work shows a methodology taking in account the engineering perspective, the practical point of view and the learning process inside students and their evaluation and, hence, their marks.

Motivating young students to be part of the global research in nuclear through the Seminar of Nuclear Fusion

Jóvenes Nucleares (Spanish Young Generation in Nuclear, JJNN) is a non-profit organization that depends on the Spanish Nuclear Society (SNE). The Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Technical University of Madrid, UPM) was chosen to host the Seminar as it is one of the most prestigious technical universities of Spain, and has a very strong curriculum in nuclear engineering training and research. Both, the UPM and the SNE, supported strongly the seminar: the opening session was conducted by the member of to board of directors of the Spanish Nuclear Society and Nuclear Engineering professor of the UPM, Emilio Mínguez and the closing session was conducted by the director of the Nuclear Fusion Institute (UPM).

Dysfunctional profile for patients in physical neurorehabilitation of upper limb

This paper proposes a first approach to Objective Motor Assessment (OMA) methodology. Also, it introduces the Dysfunctional profile (DP) concept. DP consists of a data matrix characterizing the Upper Limb (UL) physical alterations of a patient with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) during the rehabilitation process. This research is based on the comparison methology of UL movement between subjects with ABI and healthy subjects as part of OMA. The purpose of this comparison is to classify subjects according to their motor control and subsequently issue a functional assessment of the movement. For this purpose Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have been used to classify patients. Different network structures are tested. The obtained classification accuracy was 95.65%. This result allows the use of ANNs as a viable option for dysfunctional assessment. This work can be considered a pilot study for further research to corroborate these results.

Applying concept mapping strategies to improve students’ lifelong learning in physical chemistry

Este artículo ofrece una reflexión sobre el papel de los mapas conceptuales en el actual escenario de la educación In the present paper, we carry out the application of concept mapping strategies to learning Physical Chemistry, in particular, of all aspect of Corrosion. This strategy is an alternative method to supplement examinations: it can show the teacher how much the students knew and how much they didn´t know; and the students can evaluate their own learning. Before giving tile matter on Corrosion, the teachers evaluated the previous knowledge of the students in the field and explained to the students how create the conceptual maps with Cmap tools. When the subject is finished, teachers are assessed the conceptual maps developed by students and therefore also the level of the students learning. Teachers verified that the concept mapping is quite suitable for complicated theorics as Corrosion and it is an appropriate tool for the consolidation of educational experiences and for improvement affective lifelong learning. By using this method we demonstrated that the set of concepts accumulated in the cognitive structure of every student in unique and every student has therefore arranged the concepts from top to bottom in the mapping field in different ways with different linking" phrases, although these are involved in the same learning task.

Influencia del viento en los ensayos de rebase en modelo físico a escala reducida = Wind effect on wave overtopping in physical model test

El artículo que se presenta a continuación recoge la ampliación de una investigación previa sobre los rebases en los espaldones de los diques verticales y en talud. Para ello se han realizado una serie de ensayos en modelo físico a escala reducida sobre la sección vertical del Dique de Levante de Málaga, cuyo objeto principal fue analizar el efecto del viento en el rebase. Los ensayos se han realizado generando oleaje con y sin viento, comparando los resultados obtenidos en cada una de las dos situaciones y se han llevado a cabo en el Canal de Oleaje y Viento de Gran Escala existente en el Laboratorio de Experimentación Marítima del Centro de Estudios de Puertos y Costas del CEDEX. The purpose of the research work as summarised in this article, resulting from diverse work carried out at the CEDEX, is to make an analysis of the influence of wind effects on the wave overtopping of vertical sea-walls. The results obtained in the Málaga´s Levante breakwater tests are presented here. The test was carried out in large sized facilities where waves and wind are generated.