RUBRICS FOR ASSESSING TRANSVERSAL COMPETENCES IN BACHELOR’S DEGREES OF THE FACULTY OF SCIENCES

With the Bologna Process, novel pedagogic trends have been established and based on the formation in competences and continuous assessment. The new bachelor’s degrees in Chemistry (Chem) and Food Science and Technology (FST) were introduced in the University of Burgos (UBU) in the academic year 2009/10. In the verification Memories of these bachelor’s degrees 10 transversal competences (TCs) for FST and 22 transversal and 18 generic competences for Chem are specified. However, these Memories do not include proposals to assess the degree of acquisition of these skills. Thus, a working group of teachers of both degrees was formed in order to propose adequate activities and evaluation procedures for the implementation of the above¬ mentioned competences in a coordinated manner.

In this communication we want to present an summary of rubrics elaborated for assessing transversal competences in Chem and FST bachelor’s degrees of the Faculty of Sciences of UBU. Rubrics prepared so far are related to the TCs considered as more significant in our degrees. In particular, we have chosen to work on five different transversal competences:
(1) oral skills in academic/scientific presentations,
(2) spoken and written English in science,
(3) writing scientific reports,
(4) collaborative working and
(5) ICT management.

To provide the teachers the tools to assist them in the evaluation of their students a rubric has been elaborated for every activity. Two activities were selected for each competence according to the following scheme:
(1.a) Debates and (1.b) Oral presentations;
(2.a) Reading and critical analysis of an English written article and
(2.b) Development of a Scientific Blog in English;
(3.a) Monographic informs and
(3.b) Laboratory reports;
(4.a) Portfolio and
(4.b) Auto¬assessment;
(5.a) Use of Scientific Databases and
(5.b) Preparation of a document with a presentation editor.

All rubrics elaborated have a similar template using a quantitative scale (0-5) divided into three assessment levels:
(0-1) low,
(2-3) medium and
(4-5) high.

Moreover, the group is interested in the implementation of these materials in different subjects, trying to test and validate its usefulness in the acquisition and evaluation of these TCs. So, in this communication we want to present the survey elaborated, which is filled by the students to evaluate the results obtained and the usefulness with the rubrics.

Acknowledgements:
This work was supported by Vicerrectorado de Profesorado y de Personal de Administración y Servicios de la Universidad de Burgos (Proyecto de Innovación y Mejora Docente 2012/13).