by Mònica Feixas & Marina Tomàs, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain

Dear Partners,

We are delighted to welcome you to the 3rd Symposium of the European E-Competence Initiative in Barcelona. We are sure that this will be as productive as the other meetings and we hope that you will enjoy your stay in Catalonia.

UAB was founded in 1968. It is therefore a young and modern institution in comparative studies and is one of the first three Spanish universities in research and teaching. At present, UAB has approximately 3,000 teaching staff and 40,000 graduate and post-graduate students distributed in five areas of knowledge: Experimental Sciences, Human Sciences, Health Sciences, Social Sciences and Engineering.

In addition to a large variety of service and cultural facilities, the campus hosts a Scientific and Technological Park formed by specific research centres and consortiums, created with the aim of answering to the own interests of the research community and to do research in collaboration with other universities, administration, State research centres (CSIC) and industry.

The Faculty of Education Sciences, where the Symposium will take place, was founded in 1992 to group the Teaching studies and the Pedagogy studies. Nowadays, 10 education degrees, 6 doctoral degrees and an important number of master degrees are being taught.

UAB is a bilingual institution and you are very welcomed to practice Catalan. The Catalan language was prohibited during General Francisco Franco Dictatorship (1939-1975), but with the re-establishment of democracy it officially began being used again. As in most nations, our language is the strongest sense of identity for the Catalan people and our University is a great defender of it. Among other identity traits we can mention our typical cuisine, which we hope you will be able to enjoy, and our folk culture. In particular spectacles such as “castellers” (human towers), “diables” (devils running with fire), “bastoners” (a dance with sticks), “capgrossos i gegants” (giants), etc., which you will have the opportunity to see if you stay in Barcelona on Saturday, with the occasion of Mercè’s Festivity, the Mistress of Barcelona.

Benvinguts!

Mònica Feixas & Marina Tomàs

Publisher:
European eCompetence Initiative

Editors:
Christina Legg
Dirk Schneckenberg
Jenny Booth