Quality Assurance

The centre responsible for teaching obligations of the Master in Civil Engineering Systems is the “Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos”, which is part at the “Universidad Politécnica de Madrid”.

All the qualifications of the centre are within the scope of the Centre's Internal Quality Assurance System (IQAS). The IQAS implemented for the Master's Degree is part of the commitment to Quality of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The IQAS of the ETSI Caminos, Canales y Puertos covers all the degrees taught at the Centre. The Centre's IQAS was certified by the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA) in 2010. The IQAS is currently implemented and will be soon audited by the “Fundación para el Conocimiento Madri+d”, to be certified by the Madrid Quality Agency. That is based by  compiling with requirements established by the SISCAL Madri+d model, whose guide establishes the basic requirements required for an internal quality assurance system in university centres, in accordance with the Criteria and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the certification protocol established by the General Conference on University Policy.

The structure of the master involves two teaching Departments from the ETSI Caminos, Canales y Puertos. The bodies responsible for the Quality Assurance System of the Master's Degree are the following:

• Master's Academic Committee: The Academic Committee will be responsible for anything related to the academic order from the Master's degree. Specifically, it will be in charge of choosing the Director of the Master, the person in charge of Quality, as well as the person in charge of Mobility and External Relations. This body will also appoint a Quality Commission, chaired by the person responsible for the Quality of the degree, including a representative of interest groups.

• Person in charge for the Quality of the Master: It will be the main responsible for managing, coordinating and monitoring the Internal Quality Assurance System of the Master in Civil Engineering by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in its process of verification and consolidation.

• Master's Quality Commission: It will be responsible for monitoring the standard procedure of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, being adapted by the centre's quality management committee. 

• Centre Quality Management Committee: it promotes and manages the Internal Quality Assurance System

Procedures for evaluating and improving the quality of teaching and associated teaching staff

The ETSI de Caminos, Canales y Puertos has developed various quality procedures related to the quality of teaching and the teaching staff.

The IQAS is periodically reviewed as established in the Quality Manual and in the PR/ES/001 Process of Elaboration and Review of the Annual Quality Plan, according to which the Centre reviews and approves its Quality Policy and Objectives. The process establishes that the interest groups represented through the different agents involved (Quality Manager, Quality Commission/Management Team, those responsible for the affected process and School Board), after carrying out an analysis of the results of the System's processes, review them and establish the necessary changes in the Quality Policy, if any, and the new objectives emanating from it, from which the corresponding improvement actions are identified, both in the affected processes and in the IQAS as a whole, including the Documentary System that supports it. These actions make up the Annual Quality Plan. This Plan, in addition to these specific actions to be deployed, includes the corresponding managers and the tasks associated with them, for monitoring and improvement.

The Annual Quality Plan establishes the necessary improvement actions once the learning results have been analysed, the measure of stakeholder satisfaction and the performance of the different services on the basis of the annual reports made by each of them.

The process PR/ES/003 Monitoring of Official Degrees describes the process by which the Centre can ensure adequate monitoring of the implementation of the different official degrees, in order to facilitate and encourage decision-making that continuously improves the quality of the results obtained (internal quality assurance), and to have the necessary mechanisms and protocols for adequate accountability on the development of official degrees, guaranteeing the publication of information according to the different interest groups (external quality assurance). For each degree, the indicators are monitored each academic year and compared with the standard values established in the verification report to detect possible deviations. Such indicators are:

- Abandonment rate

- Graduation rate

- Performance rate for each teaching course

- Overall efficiency rate

- Return rate

The IQAS implemented in the Center and with scope the degree establishes the necessary processes for the evaluation and improvement of the quality of the teaching-learning process. To this end, there are processes in place for the collection of information and data and the monitoring of indicators and analysis of the information collected that allow for continuous improvement.

The IQAS processes that allow the collection of information are the following:

• PR/SO/008 UPM Survey System (Surveys of the PAS, PDI and Students, Graduates and Employers): The aim of this procedure is to describe the system for carrying out studies and analyses that the UPM carries out on different key aspects of the University, under the criteria of transparency, efficacy and efficiency, with the ultimate objective of: to render accounts to society, providing information on the degree of fulfillment of the purposes entrusted to it, the quality of the services it offers and their continuous improvement, and to provide the necessary information for decision-making to all the agents involved in the management and deployment of university activity processes. Records and evidence of the process and application to the degree:

- Survey on the Profile of Official Master's Degree Admission

- Survey of Working Insertion to Graduates and Satisfaction

- PDI Satisfaction Survey

- PAS Satisfaction Survey

- Employer Survey

- Student Satisfaction Survey

- Official Master's Satisfaction Survey

- Global Results Report

• PR/SO/005 Measurement of Satisfaction and Identification of Needs, this process describes how the Centre, once it receives the reports from the University resulting from the application of the previous process, analyses these results. It also describes the Center's own systems for measuring satisfaction and identifying needs through reports from professional institutions and internal student surveys.
• PR/SO/006 Management of Complaints, Suggestions and Congratulations, this process describes the channels through which the Center can know a complaint, suggestion or congratulations and how they are processed, resolved and answered.
• PR/SO/007 Docentia - UPM, this process allows obtaining information from the students for each teacher, subject and degree of the teaching activity and of the activity of the teacher.
• PR/ES/003 Monitoring of Official Degrees.
• PR/ES/001 Elaboration and revision of the Annual Quality Plan.

On the other hand, once the information has been collected and processed, the IMS has processes that allow its analysis, decision making and continuous improvement, these processes are:

• PR/ES/003 Monitoring of Official Degrees, already described in the previous section.
• PR/CL/001 Coordination of Teaching, process of teacher coordination of the Centre's degrees, focusing on teacher planning and assessment systems, and as a result records are obtained: learning guides and teacher planning.
• PR/ES/001 Elaboration and revision of the Annual Quality Plan

The implementation of these processes in the Center and in the master guarantee:

- The analysis of the students' satisfaction with the degree.

- The analysis of teaching staff satisfaction with the degree.

- Assessment and analysis of teaching activity.

- The evaluation of the teaching coordination of the teaching of the degree.

- Revision and improvement of study plans.

- Evaluation and monitoring of the results of the degree.

- Decision making derived from the evaluation and its follow-up.

- Implementation of improvement actions through the Annual Quality Plan.

- Publication and dissemination of the results of the teaching quality of the degree in an easily accessible place on the web.

For this objective, the Academic Committee of the master analyses the results of the Master periodically as recorded in the Minutes, in order to implement improvement measures, and likewise establish improvement actions in the Annual Quality Plan.

Decisions and proposals for improvement, based on the collection and analysis of information, are made in agreement with the Departments responsible for the Master and with the School Board, through the Centre Commissions (Study Plan Commission, Government Commission), which culminates in the analysis and decision-making by the School Board.

Links:

Manual y Procesos de Calidad de la ETSI de Caminos, Canales y Puertos

Resultados e informes

Contact:

Subdirección de Acreditación y Calidad, ETSI Caminos
acreditacion.caminos@upm.es

Phone: 910674008