What are the distinguishing features of our educational model?

The UOC has developed its own educational model. Its main features are:

• Dynamism and flexibility: continuously adapting and evolving over time, allowing students to learn in a way similar to that in which they work and communicate on the internet.
• Asynchrony: as the backbone of communication between members of our community, it allows every student to pace their studies to fit their personal and professional lives.
• Focus on students and their learning activity: centred around learning environments that blend a broad range of resources and work dynamics based on support from our teaching staff and interaction between classmates. Learning situations are drawn from the workplace or everyday life, encourage active participation and nurture students' critical and reflective spirit.
• Continuous and formative assessment: assessment activities help students to achieve their learning goals and develop skills. Feedback is given throughout the semester so that students can learn from it and consolidate what they know.
• Collaborative learning: fostering participation and collective knowledge construction by striking a balance between individual student engagement and collaboration.
• Support: students are supported by specialist teaching staff whose chief duties are to design, guide, encourage and assess the entire education process.

The environment in which all these constituent parts come together and interrelate is the UOC's Virtual Campus, which provides students with access to the virtual classrooms.

What are its components?

Students' learning activity is the backbone of our educational model. Three aspects come into play to support students in their learning: the teaching staff, the networked community, and the tools and resources.

How does this model evolve?

Our educational model is constantly evolving thanks to innovation, applied research and our ability to harness new trends in e-learning.

The eLearning Innovation Center (eLinC) drives this evolution by means of learning innovation. The eLinC team strives to improve the student learning experience by providing services to teachers, advising them on how to analyse and redesign their courses and programmes, and listening to their needs and ideas. It also helps to devise and deploy teaching innovation projects by providing pilot testing environments. Learning analytics is also one of its key focuses, through which it explores and analyses learning data. Its overriding mission is to evolve e-learning through innovation and constant improvements that position the UOC as a world leader in this field.