3 Lines of Work

Through working on the three interrelated lines the ACE project has contributed to:


ACE Line 1: Creating International Reference Points to Guide and Inspire Programme Revision and Enhancement Processes

ACE Line 1 activities have permitted ACE participants to create

Regional Subject-Specific Qualifications Reference Frameworks are organized around the key dimensions in the graduate profile of any Higher Education Programme (HEP) in the Subject Area in South America – the dimensions each HEP needs to address for its graduates to be recognized as specialists in their Subject Area throughout the region. Thus, these international Reference Frameworks build on the Meta-Profile agreements – agreements about the key areas of the competence profile of the graduate in the subject area.

These key dimensions or areas are further described in terms of learning outcomes for knowledge, skills and responsibilities/wider competences – so as to better guide and inspire programme designers looking for internationally recognised benchmarks to ensure the relevance of the desired graduate profile.

All in all, 4 Regional Subject-Specific Qualifications Reference Frameworks have been developed – one for programmes in Education, one for programmes in Environmental Studies, one for programmes in History, and one for programmes in Nursing.

These can be consulted here.

Repositories of Good Practice in Student-Centred Teaching, Learning and Assessment seek to demonstrate how students can be supported in developing the different competence clusters as described in the Reference Frameworks – e.g. how student development towards learning outcomes related to a particular dimension and corresponding to a certain level of complexity (‘knowledge’ or ‘skills’ or ‘responsibilities’) can be supported, achieved and assessed.

Again, each Subject Area has created their own Repository to bring together the already existing good practices and/or jointly create proposals for teaching, learning and assessment activities that are both feasible and inspirational – i.e. they can work in practice in the majority of ACE institutional contexts and are in line with key principles of student-centred 

Here you can read more about the Repositories that have been created and explore them (in Spanish)


ACE Line 2: Engaging Students and Staff in Jointly Building Student-Centred Higher Education

ACE Line 2 activities have permitted ACE participants to become competent champions of implementing Student-Centred Approach in their institutions. As Champions, members of the ACE Units created resources (videos, visuals, etc.) and ran sessions for staff and students in own higher education institutions in order to engage students and staff in collaborative efforts and jointly build conditions for full adoption of Student-Centred Approach.

Each ACE Project Meeting helped the attending ACE participants to build expertise in a particular topic related to the Student-Centred Approach and see how others in their institutions can be helped to develop similar awareness, knowledge, skills and/or attitudes.

After each Project Meeting, ACE Unit members designed and facilitated sessions with (1) staff and (2) students to share the insights and get the participants of such sessions ‘on board’ with jointly building student-centred higher education. For each of these sessions, ACE Unit members created/curated resources, a selection of which has be converted into the ACE Compilation of Resources for Engaging Students and Staff in Building Student-Centred Higher Education and is now available here.

The six broad topics addressed are as follows:

What does the Student-Centred Approach imply?
How to write reliable Programme Learning Outcomes?
The application of credits in degree programmes
Writing reliable Unit/Course Learning Outcomes
Applying the Student-Centred Approach in Teaching and Learning
Applying the Student-Centred Approach in Assessment


ACE Line 3: Developing Model Student-Centred Curricula

ACE Line 3 activities permitted the ACE participants to apply the insights from the Lines 1 and 2 in order to enhance their currently existing programmes – to bring the programmes in line with the international benchmarks agreed in Line 1 and to ensure that the programmes incorporate key features of Student-Cented Approach in both their design and implementation. The Model Curricula created by the ACE Units can be consulted here (in Spanish/Portuguese).