COORDINATION IN PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY SUBJECTS: THE ROLE OF TEACHING ASSISTANTS

European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has set off a deep modification of university degrees, regarding not only the curricula and content structure but also their learning approach. A great change has arisen in the teaching-learning model, drifting from a model focused on knowledge acquisition to a model focused on competences. This modification implies a change in the assessment paradigm, which should be transformed from a merely summative (final) into a continuous (formative) process. Concomitantly, this continuous assessment leads to the use of new evaluation tools. Upon the official deployment of the new Grades, a substantial increase in the teaching and competence evaluation workload has been observed. In this work, a new "Teaching Assistant" model is introduced with a double aim: i) to alleviate the teaching burden of the professors in charge of the new Grade subjects, mostly in the continuous evaluation tasks, and ii) to introduce the junior research personnel into departmental teaching assignments, in a more ordered, sequential, and official way. Finally, the model is properly exemplified with Physical Chemistry subjects in the Grades of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.