Workshop about ‘LMD’ system aims to enhance quality

The University Cheikh Ahmadoul Khadim (UCAK) in Touba, Senegal, organised a workshop to explain the ‘LMD’ higher education system to teaching and research staff, and improve their proficiency in operating it.

Originally developed in France, in conjunction with the European Union’s Bologna Process, LMD (Licence-Master-Doctorat or Bachelor-Masters-Doctorate) is built around the three degree levels, corresponding to three, five and eight years’ higher education.

Degree qualifications are composed of ‘ECTS’ – transferable credits – which facilitate international student and teacher mobility and recognition of diplomas between institutions that have adopted the system.

LMD has been adopted in many other countries, including most of the European Union, and in Africa – including Senegal, some years ago.

But according to Professor Mor Faye, the president of the university’s academic council and a coordinator of the workshop, the LMD system at UCAK was not functioning as well as it might.

The two-day workshop, organised jointly by UCAK’s health sciences institute and its Islamic and Arab studies unit, “aims to develop the skills of the teaching and research personnel”, because it “is impossible to organise educational programmes around a precise pedagogical format – the LMD system – without the parties concerned understanding what it is”, Faye told the Agence de presse Sénégalaise, or APS.

The idea was to leave the workshop with “a thorough knowledge of the philosophy of the LMD system”, thanks to leading experts who had been invited to explain what the system was and the necessary conditions for a high quality LMD, said Faye, who added his ambition was for UCAK to be aligned with the best universities in the world.

“It’s also about opening up opportunities for the mobility of students and teachers between our university and other partner universities. And so our degrees can be equally recognised at both national and international levels,” APS reported him saying. — Compiled by Jane Marshall.

This article is drawn from local media. University World News cannot vouch for the accuracy of the original reports.