Published 08.11.2023
The Master's Degree in Geological Engineering and the Master's Degree in Sustainable Mining will carry out the visit between January and March at the decision of the panel of experts assigned by the evaluation agency, during the current call for the accreditation renewal process.
He Royal Decree 822/2021, of September 28, which establishes the organization of university education and the procedure to ensure its quality establishes that bachelor's degrees that have 240 ects, master's and doctoral degrees must have been renewed within a maximum period of six years, from the start date of teaching the degree or the renewal of the previous accreditation. In the event that the resolution of the Council of Universities rejects the renewal of the accreditation of a degree, this would mean its immediate removal from the Registry of Universities, Degrees and Centers (RUTC) and its declaration of extinction.
Several degrees from this School have already renewed their accreditation in previous calls in a FAVORABLE manner.
On the website of each of the titles participating in this process, a link appears that gives access to the respective self-evaluation report that has been presented by the Center to the regional evaluation agency and to the “OPEN HEARING FORM”, through which any interested person can express their opinion on any aspect related to any of the degrees that are being evaluated to renew their accreditation.
Master's degree in Geological Engineering
https://minasyenergia.upm.es/renovacion-acreditacion-muig.html
Master's Degree in Sustainable Mining
https://minasyenergia.upm.es/master_mineria_sostenible/renovacion-acreditacion-mums.html
Additional information about the RA process
Accreditation Renewal: Objective of this process
The evaluation process for the renewal of accreditation aims to main objective:
“check whether the results of the degree are adequate and allow the adequate continuity of its delivery to be guaranteed until the next renewal of the accreditation.”
These results focus, among others:
· in the verification of the acquisition of skills by the students and
· in the valuation mechanisms for their acquisition that the university has developed for each degree, as well as
· in it analysis of the evolution of the results of the same.
Accreditation Renewal: General Description of the Process
In summary, the main milestones of the process are:
1. Selection of titles to evaluate
Each year, the Foundation, together with the universities, agree on the degrees that must renew their accreditation throughout the following year.
2. Visit planning
The Foundation jointly establishes with the universities the dates on which the external visit will be carried out in each of the university centers and assigns the degrees to the panels of experts who will carry out the external evaluation of them.
3. Self-assessment report
The university prepares a self-assessment report for each of the degrees that corresponds to it, and must compile and organize all the required information in the summary tables of the data and indicators, as indicated in the “Evaluation guide for the renewal of the accreditation of official Bachelor's and Master's degrees” of the M+d Foundation, as well as the information referring to the set of evidence that supports the assessments made in each of the guidelines.
The Self-Assessment Report is prepared in accordance with the template provided by the Foundation, which must meet the following requirements:
· Be complete, rigorous and concrete. Analyzing and evaluating the key elements.
· Be based on evidence and include the corresponding references (documents, indicators, opinions, etc.), which are explicitly detailed in the document.
· Having been subjected to information by interest groups.
The university, based on the analysis of the information, makes a description of the degree of compliance with each of the guidelines contemplated in the evaluation model for the renewal of accreditation.
The self-assessment report, together with the evidence, is presented through SICAM, the computer application that the Foundation makes available to universities for the management of this process.
4. Visit Preparation
Each member of the Expert Panel prepares an individual report on the title. Once these have been completed, the members of the Panel share the main conclusions, determine the aspects to focus on during the visit, and proceed to:
· Identify the information they need to highlight those aspects that are confusing, contradictory or that are not supported by evidence, as well as specify the issues that must be contrasted during the different hearings.
· Select for each title, a series of subjects, reference subjects, which will serve as a sample for the evaluation of various guidelines. Of the subjects, the following will be analyzed in detail:
· The teaching guides.
· The summarized CVs of the teachers involved.
· Student evaluation dossiers: the completed exams and other evaluation tests (practice notebooks, assignments, reports, etc.) of 4 students who have taken this subject. The university must select dossiers with different qualifications
· The adequacy of practices and their coordination with theory, as well as the material resources available for student learning.
The information requested for each subject refers only to the last academic year in which the subject was taught and completed.
The Panel of experts, together with the university, establishes the work plan, in order to provide the necessary means for the visit. The secretary of the Panel will be the one who acts as a liaison between the Panel itself and the university. All hearings deemed appropriate are established with the groups involved in the title and it is verified that the university has made this process public.
5. Development of the visit
During the visit, the evidence provided is contrasted or validated, controversies or disagreements are detected and, where appropriate, new evidence is obtained that allows aspects not considered in the documentation provided to be assessed.
Throughout the visit, the Panel of experts holds hearings with the groups according to the previously agreed work plan, visits the facilities and reviews the complementary documentation that has not been provided up to that point.
At the end of the visit, the Panel writes a brief writing or statement that is read before the academic leaders of the University, which describes the actions carried out, the participating agents, incidents produced and strengths and/or weaknesses detected, giving a global vision of the evaluated title.
The President of the Expert Panel coordinates and is responsible for the writing of the External Visit Report (IVE).
6. Application for renewal of accreditation
Once the visit has been carried out, the university formally requests the renewal of the accreditation of its official degrees in accordance with the criteria and deadlines, determined by the corresponding ORDER of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Community of Madrid, which establishes the deadlines to request the renewal of the accreditation of official university degrees at the Community Universities.
7. Final Evaluation Phase
The self-assessment report, the external visit report and the rest of the previous information available on the degree included in the accreditation dossier, is analyzed by the Branch Evaluation and Accreditation Committee corresponding body responsible at the Madri+d Foundation for preparing a provisional evaluation report (IP) that will have to include a global assessment of each of the evaluation criteria that make up the accreditation renewal model.
Said provisional evaluation report may be: “favorable to the renewal of accreditation” or “with aspects that must necessarily be modified in order to obtain a favorable report.”
All Interim Reports, whatever their result, must be motivated, and may include “recommendations” for improvement or “necessary modifications.” The first are not mandatory, as is evident, but in the next renewal of the accreditation the degree must explain why it did not consider its adoption appropriate, if applicable. The latter, on the contrary, must be put into practice and incorporated into the center's annual quality plan.
The Foundation informs the university that the provisional report for each degree is available in SICAM, so that, within a period of 20 calendar days, it can make the allegations it deems appropriate and/or provide the improvement plan it deems appropriate to correct the errors. aspects that must be corrected, where appropriate, in the opinion of the Committee.
After receiving and analyzing the allegations and/or the improvement plan, the Branch Evaluation and Accreditation Committee will prepare and issue the final evaluation report.
This report may be favorable or unfavorable to the renewal of accreditation of the title.
The Foundation will send the final evaluation report to the university, the Council of Universities, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports and the General Directorate of Universities and Research of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Community of Madrid.
The Council of Universities will issue a resolution within six months from the date of submission of the evaluation request. However, this period is suspended for a maximum period of three months, until the General Directorate of Universities receives the evaluation report issued by the Madri+d Foundation.
Renewal of Accreditation: Outline of the evaluation model
The self-assessment report involves an analysis of the degree of compliance with the quality standards established by the regional agency in a evaluation model which consists of 16 guidelines distributed in 6 criteria that are grouped around 3 dimensions:
Renewal of Accreditation: Preparation of the ETSIME self-assessment report
The report is prepared with the purpose of evaluating the degree of compliance of the University Master's Degree in Geological Engineering (MUIG), and the University Master's Degree in Mining (MUMS) offered by the Higher Technical School of Mining and Energy Engineers (ETSIME) of the University Polytechnic of Madrid (UPM), according to the accreditation criteria established by the Madri+d Knowledge Foundation.
The MUIG and MUMS began to be taught in the 2014/15 academic year and obtained their initial accreditation in 2013. These accreditations were renewed respectively in 2018 and 2017. Subsequently, in 2019, both Masters requested a modification that involved changes in essential elements of the program.
In the process of renewing accreditation for the second time, the MUIG and MUMS participate in typology B.2.1, which applies to degrees that have made changes to essential elements after a previous renewal with a favorable evaluation and a score of A or B in all criteria. The conditions for these renewals include having obtained a prior positive evaluation and making modifications to essential elements of the title.
In this procedure, the self-assessment reports will focus on the criteria affected by the changes made during the modifications and will provide evidence to demonstrate compliance with these criteria. The internal quality monitoring report of the title will be presented as main evidence
The process followed for the preparation and approval of these MUIG and MUMS self-assessment reports has been carried out in a planned and structured manner, defining the necessary stages for obtaining data and information, data analysis, consultation with groups (students and teachers), analysis of results, review at degree level, review at center level and review at university level. Communication has been constant and fluid between the different groups involved in the preparation of the reports.
During the academic years in which the title that is the subject of these reports has been deployed, data and information related to students, human and material resources, and subjects have been systematically collected. The data have been analyzed and presented to the Academic Commission of the Center, which has studied them in order to reinforce the positive aspects and establish the necessary actions in case of identifying significant variations in the evolution of the historical data or with respect to the estimates made in the verified report. These data have also been analyzed periodically by the Center's Quality Commission, which through the processes involved has been incorporating the necessary improvements to improve the title.
The design of the MUIG and MUMS contemplates the strategic objectives set by the UPM for master's degrees. These define the context in which the title under evaluation was verified, and are the following:
a) The consideration of the singularities of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, with a marked technological orientation and closely related to professional fields, which implies a high demand for specialized training, which leads to the presence of a considerable number of master's degrees that combine academic-oriented itineraries and research-oriented itineraries. This reality, in turn, leads to a relatively low percentage of graduate students who complete their training with the defense of their doctoral thesis.
b) The growing international presence that the UPM wishes to maintain in all its activities in general and in the fields of technological and postgraduate research, which recommends that, along with quality criteria, criteria be introduced aimed at facilitating the incorporation of students and teachers from foreign countries who can receive and teach part of the teachings in English.
c) The recommendation to extend to the UPM master's degrees the criteria and requirements included in the "Requirements and recommendations for the implementation of Study Plans at the Polytechnic University of Madrid" approved by the Governing Council of the UPM at its meeting of July 10, 2008, together with the analysis of what that document establishes for Degree and Master's studies leading to regulated professions or that replace second cycles of Architect, Engineer, Graduate, Technical Architect or Technical Engineer taught .
In each call for renewal of accreditation, the Vice-Rector's Office for Quality and Efficiency of the UPM establishes the guidelines to follow in this process, both for the preparation of the self-assessment report and for obtaining each of the information and data object. evaluation, as well as the communication mechanisms and deadlines to take into account in the process. Both in the Center and in the Rectorate, the responsibilities of each of the participants in obtaining the necessary information and activities are defined. At the center level, the Director of the ETSIME (D. Francisco Javier Elorza Tenreiro), the Deputy Director of Academic Planning has been identified: Head of Studies of (D. Antonio Ruiz Perea), Coordinator of the MUMS (D. José Ángel Sanchidrián Blanco ) and the Technical Quality Unit, as main actors in the process and as interlocutors with the groups involved in the center.
In a first stage, when the time came to face the renewal of the accreditation, the Vice-Rectorate of Quality and Efficiency informed those involved in the center, the objective and nature of the process, the main milestones that make it up and the type of data and evidence to provide.
In a second stage, the actions to be carried out at the level of the Vice-Rectorate of Quality and Efficiency, Center and Coordination of the title were identified with each of the groups involved in the preparation and approval of this report and we proceeded to interact with each one. of them to collect the information requested in the different sections:
· Vice-Rector's Office for Quality and Efficiency: Interaction has been carried out with the dependent bodies, as well as with other vice-rector's offices, such as, for example, with the Vice-Rector's Office for Strategy and Digital Transformation, in order to obtain indicators for subjects, teachers, graduates, satisfaction, among others. .
· Centre: Interaction has been carried out with the unit responsible for Postgraduate studies at the centre, with the unit responsible for International Relations and External Relations, and with the Personnel Management service, to obtain information on teaching staff, support staff, mobility, external internships, insertion employment, academic results, among others.
In the third stage, the task of information analysis and documentation integration has been carried out, which has been carried out mainly by the Technical Quality Unit/Academic Committee of the master's degree.
In the fourth stage, review, a triple review process has been carried out to detect possible inconsistencies and introduce the necessary improvements. Firstly, the documentation has been reviewed from the coordination of the title. Secondly, it has been reviewed at the Center level, with special involvement of the Management and the Technical Quality Unit. Finally, it has been reviewed at the Rectorate level, with the active participation of the Quality Unit of the Vice-Rector's Office for Quality and Efficiency, which at all times has maintained fluid communication and constant support from the involved staff of the Madri Knowledge Foundation. +d.
