DUSHANBE, July 24, 2009, Asia-Plus  -- The Fourth Summer School for journalism teachers, entitled “Modern Journalism Teaching Methods,” is going on in the Zimchuroud resort in the Varzob district.

Organized by the public association, Journalist, under financial support of the Media Program of the Tajik Branch of Open Society Institute/ Assistance Foundation (OSI/AF-Tajikistan), the workshop was launched on July 23 and runs through July 28.

According to OSI/AF-Tajikistan, 15 journalism lecturers from Tajik National University, Russian-Tajik Slavic University (RTSU), Khorog State University, Khujand State University and Qurghon Teppa University are taking an intensive training course on principles of drawing up new modules in accordance with requirements of the credit-test system.

The workshop participants are discussing to what an extent the situation has changed after participation of Tajik specialists in implementation of principles of the Bologna process in education, credit-test system of education, etc.

The purpose of the Bologna process (or Bologna accords) is to create the European higher education area by making academic degree standards and quality assurance standards more comparable and compatible throughout Europe, in particular under the Lisbon Recognition Convention.  It is named after the place it was proposed, the University of Bologna in the Italian city of Bologna, with the signing in 1999 of the Bologna declaration Ministers of Education from 29 European countries.  This was opened up to other countries signatory to the European Cultural Convention of the Council of Europe; further governmental meetings have been held in Prague (2001), Berlin (2003), Bergen (2005) and London in Spring 2007.

The basic framework adopted is of three cycles of higher education qualification.  As outlined in the Bergen Declaration, the cycles are defined in terms of qualification and ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System) credits: 1st cycle – typically 180−240 ECTS credits, usually awarding a Bachelor’s degree;  2nd cycle – typically 90−120 ECTS credits (a minimum of 60 on 2nd-cycle level), usually awarding a Master’s degree; and 3rd cycle Doctoral degree.  No ECTS range given.  In most cases, these will take 3, 2, and 3 years respectively to complete.  The actual naming of the degrees may vary from country to country.

One academic year corresponds to 60 ECTS-credits that are equivalent to 1,500-1,800 hours of study.  The new model comes closer to the North American and Japanese systems.  It gives greater weight to practical training and to intensive research projects.  The way credits are measured reflects how hard a student has worked. The new evaluation methods reflect not only a student''s performance on exams, but also his or her lab experiments, presentations, hours spent on study, innovation capacities, and so forth.