ECTS Credit: Reality Or Fiction?

Abstract

The ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) has become in the student workload measuring system aimed to assure that student achieves academic objectives which are formulated in terms of competences and learning outcomes. New European credit tries to determine the academic work (class activities + non class activities) that a student should devote to the acquisition of different competences, abilities and general knowledge related to a specific subject during the academic year.It is essential, therefore, to have a tool in order to establish if student workload is matching with the reality designed for bachelor degrees. In essence, present paper shows that the real student workload is lower than the one expected for each of the subjects. However, something relevant to note is that student workload shows a great variability along the academic period. As consequence of this, students are undergone to workloads rated as higher than the ones theoretically estimated for the whole university graduate (forty hours per week). On one hand, this kind of investigations is very useful to regulate the distance between the theoretical and real workload assigned to each subject and, on the other hand, to set in motion academic programs specifically aimed to establish coordination mechanisms to improve the workload temporal distribution within an academic year.