The Human Communication and Interaction Research Group www.hci-rg.com
You are in the section: Technologies (SpearHead).
SpearHead
The SpearHead is our pilot program designed to test classes in English in the Bachelor's degrees in Computer Science of the School of Computer Science and Engineering of Oviedo (University of Oviedo, Spain).
Motivation and Goals
Road to Success
Chronology of the SpearHead program:
- September 2005. Spearhead was born. Classes in English language begin in the Academic Year 2005-06.
- October 2005. Data Structures and Algorithms, first non philology subject in English language in the 400 years of History of the University of Oviedo.
- March 2006. University authorities encourage our team to develop University Extension Courses in English language.
- October 2006. Number of students participating in the program for the Academic Year 2006-07 doubles.
- April 2007. University authorities allow the use of English language in any academic subject.
- October 2007. English language used in dozens of subjects in different faculties. SpearHead reaches its main goal.
Computer Science is a discipline that evolves so fast that some of its latest technologies and techniques become obsolete several months before their release. In this fast changing environment, the engineers must have access to the very latest sources of information. Otherwise their knowledge will become obsolete soon.
These sources of information are usually written in the current language of Science, Technology and Engineering: English. As a result, English is used as the official language in a great amount of universities, research centres and ministries across Europe, including many countries where this language is not the mother tongue.
However, Spain (and some other few Mediterranean countries) represents the exception to this rule of thumb. For instance, in 2005 neither the Spanish Foreign Office nor the Spanish International Cooperation Agency did provide any kind of content in English in their web sites.
In this context, we would like to give our 5 cents to turn the tide, improving the quality of the engineering degrees of the University of Oviedo by mean of our SpearHead program. Our goal is the analysis of the human communication and interaction features applied to this task in order to improve it using new communication tools.
Participation in the SpearHead program is voluntary as our students can choose between classes in English or in Spanish for the same subject.
Advantages for our Students
Students participating in any of our associated subjects are going to benefit from:
- Practice your English in a real situation. You may speak, read and write in English, sharing resources with your classmates in the same way you would do it in a foreign country.
- Improve your curricula. SpearHead's students will receive a certificate sealed and signed by the Dean of the School of Computer Science and Engineering of Oviedo (EUITIO) , acknowledging their participation in the program.
- Special bonus for your SpearHead's subjects. Some subjects of this program provides special benefits to their students. Simplified tests or extra points in the qualifications are some examples.
- Meet other people and cultures. If the SpearHead program succeeds in its goals, it will be easier to reach new SOCRATES/ERASMUS agreements with other European institutions. Having an entire degree in English it will be easier to encourage people from other universities to get advantage of the quality of our courses.
Advantages for our Lecturers
As member of the SpearHead program you will have to design your classes in two languages, working twice but being paid as usual. However, there are still some benefits for teachers who love their work:
- You will teach to the really best students among the best. SpearHead's students are open minded people who want to improve their professional future in the best way possible and you will play a crucial role in this task!
- There is not need to translate your research work to Spanish. Our institution pays us to research first and then, to distribute the knowledge acquired to our students. As research work is always done in the language of science, being later translated to Spanish, the SpearHead program allows yout to avoid this last step.
- Improve your English. You will have the chance to practice you spoken and written English in a great amount of situations.
- Meet other people and cultures. A successful development of this program would allow us to increase the number of interchange agreements for students with other European institutions. You might teach to a great number of foreign students in a near future.
Supporting Spearhead
We encourage lecturers to support this initiative. If you want to join your subject to this program, please contact us.
If you want to show your students that your subject has joined the Spearhead program, you may display this icon. Here is the HTML you could use to add this icon to your Web page:
<a href="http://www.hci-rg.com/en-spearhead.htm" hreflang="en" rel="external">
<img src="http://www.hci-rg.com/Resources/Logos/Membership/spearhead.gif"
alt="Spearhead Program." width="88" height="31"/>
</a>
Feedback
In order to obtain feedback information about the performance of this program, we kindly request to our students to download and fill this survey, sending it to their spearhead's tutor or contacting us:
- Spearhead Survey [Formato PDF - tamaño: 154 Kb.].
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