New at the UOC in 2021/22: three bachelor's, two master's and one doctoral degree

The new academic programmes the UOC will launch in the autumn are: bachelor's degrees in Primary Education, in Techniques for Software Development, and in Digital Interaction and Multimedia Techniques; university master's degrees in Planetary Health and in History of the Contemporary World; and a doctoral degree in Society, Technology and Culture. Àngels Fitó, the UOC's Vice President for Competitiveness and Employability, commented "Education, health, technology and humanities are fields that not only offer good employment prospects, but also meet the University's goal of training professionals with the capacity for transformation."

Bachelor's Degree in Primary Education

In September 2021 the UOC will launch its Bachelor's Degree in Primary Education, which will be read by a hundred students and taught exclusively in Catalan. With this degree the institution will complete its range of academic programmes for future teachers. In its 25-year history, more than 10,000 education professionals have studied in the UOC's virtual classrooms on its teacher training programmes.

"We have taken into account the superlative quality standards of the teacher training traditionally offered in our university system and combined them with our educational method, our specific approach and our experience," explained Antoni Badia, the director of the programme and a professor in the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences. The faculty has prepared a programme of study "with an up-to-date vision of education" in which schools do not stand apart from society, but are integrated bodies that interact with all the other social agents both in the classroom and externally. "A teacher must be aware that education takes place everywhere; the school is the most important place, but it must be interconnected," he stated.

Bachelor's Degree in Techniques for Software Development

Another of the new bachelor's degrees that will start in September is the Bachelor's Degree in Techniques for Software Development, which is the only one of its kind to be taught online and fully in English anywhere in Spain. It is an educational opportunity in a booming sector, in which numerous studies predict an increase in demand, high salaries and the possibility of working from anywhere in the world. "The degree offers an international approach to training students to develop all types of software, from system applications to web, mobile and multiplatform apps," explained the programme's director, Robert Clarisó. 

Bachelor’s Degree in Digital Interaction and Multimedia Techniques

The third new bachelor's degree that the University will offer in the upcoming academic year is the Bachelor’s Degree in Digital Interaction and Multimedia Techniques, which is directed by Laura Porta, a member of the Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications. It is a programme that updates and overhauls the Bachelor's Degree in Multimedia, which had been taught for over a decade. The new degree "is in line with the needs of the market, which requires multimedia professionals with cross-disciplinary knowledge," explained Porta. Upon completion of their degree, the students will be proficient in both visual and technological techniques: they will learn website development, user experience and interface design, digital image and audio, 2D and 3D digital graphics, animation, virtual reality and videogames, as well as the interactive multimedia application creation process. "They will have the hybrid profile that both small companies and large corporations require," she added. 

The programme will adopt an extremely hands-on approach and each student will have to prepare three cross-disciplinary projects and build up a portfolio.

University Master's Degree in Planetary Health 

In October of this year, the UOC, Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), which is sponsored by the "la Caixa" Foundation, will offer a new University Master's Degree in Planetary Health. This innovative multidisciplinary master's programme, which is the world's first with this specific focus, has the aim of remotely providing interdisciplinary training for professionals with different areas of knowledge to analyse the risks that the environmental and global climate crisis pose to human health, assess their possible impact and propose adaptation and mitigation solutions.

University Master's Degree in History of the Contemporary World 

In the new academic year the University will also launch its new University Master's Degree in History of the Contemporary World, which focuses on the use of history as a tool to analyse today's and tomorrow's challenges. The new master's degree offers a global, contemporary perspective and covers the early modern period through to the present day. "We focus on historical processes that are relevant and living, limited not by geographic criteria, but thematic criteria," explained Jaume Claret, the programme's director and a member of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

Accordingly, the courses cover questions such as the climate emergency, economic globalization, gender, new narratives and inequalities, based on relevant material selected by specialist teaching staff in order to offer an up-to-date perspective of each subject area.

Doctoral Programme in Society, Technology and Culture 

The Doctoral Programme in Society, Technology and Culture rounds out the new official degrees offered by the UOC in the upcoming academic year. This programme will provide tools to analyse the complex relationships between technology and society, understand the key challenges that define contemporary societies and contribute to improving them. This multidisciplinary doctoral degree, which spans the gap between social sciences and humanities, covers growing inequalities, various forms of discrimination, sustainability, social and economic innovation, citizen mobilization and centre-periphery tensions in cultural contexts that are becoming increasingly digitized. Its director is Mireia Fernández Ardèvol, a senior researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3).