Successful enrollment in the course "English at your pace"

Through the Office of the Vice President for Teacher Training and Teaching Innovation, the URJC has signed an agreement with Vaughan to give English classes to an important part of the Teaching and Research Staff (PDI) and Administration and Services Staff (PAS) of the university .

“The main motivation for offering this course is to update the level of English; for PDI it will contribute to a greater internationalization of their teaching and research activity and for PAS, it will make it easier to come into contact with international institutions or students”, comments Antonio Galisteo, Vice-Rector for Teacher Training and Teaching Innovation.

The training agreement established with Vaughan, materialized in the course "English at your pace" will give access to this training to an important part of the URJC staff, since a total of 800 places are offered, 615 places for the PDI and 185 places for the PAS. Currently, with one day left to complete the registration, there are 535 requests for PDI and 242 for PAS, which exceeds the offer of 185 places. As Antonio Galisteo has commented, "we are sure that all the places will be exhausted and that, as in the case of the PAS, in PDI there will be more demand than supply".

The course will last 12 months and will be carried out in mixed modality, using the Vaughan training portal. Due to its characteristics, it is the course of the Permanent Training Plan of the PDI with the largest number of participating teachers and the longest duration that has been offered to date at our university.

 

 

“The English language is the international language both at the teaching level and at the research level; scientific publications in international journals are carried out in English, scientific congresses the same…”, explains Galisteo. In addition, he assures that this course will be perfect to meet the demands of foreign students, “who require that teachers and staff be able to communicate with them and serve them in English. For this reason, we must constantly improve, even among those with a good level”.

Although a large part of the PAS and PDI have a good level of English, "also that a part of both groups have not updated their training for years, and the day-to-day work does not allow them to attend English classes or be able to practice it actively", Galisteo assures. Therefore, this is an opportunity to refresh your knowledge and even increase it, obtaining a certification of the level acquired.

In relation to students, all grades have the subject of Modern Language and the most chosen is English. However, it is not ruled out that this course could be offered later to certain students as complementary training "always taking into account the budgetary restrictions that we have in public administration," says Galisteo. "It is a question to assess in the future."

With this agreement, in just 3 years the knowledge of the English language of practically the entire staff of both PDI and PAS could be significantly improved.