Abstract:

The interest in a competence-based approach in the university, continues increasing at a considerable rate in the European Higher Education Area. Results obtained from research done in this field, recognize as critical the importance of having certain attributes related to abilities and skills, in order to attain a quality education and facilitate a professional development of the students. Therefore, to contribute to the progress of the high education system, academic institutions have been working hard over the last few years to achieve an international accreditation of their new developed curricular programs, adapted to the demands of the European working models. Apart from the evaluation of the subjects within the new titles, it is well known that one driving force behind accreditation is related to the generic and specific competences expected to be achieved by the students along the planned studies. These competences, can be generic, abilities and skills necessary regardless the education degree, or more specific of the sort of education. Although both are crucial, the generic competences are becoming increasingly more important for the social prosperity, as they will ensure a learning of nature valid in any situation.

Nevertheless, the assessment of the generic competences and their inclusion in the curriculum has yet to be adequately achieved. It is widely accepted that the competence-based learning requires a change in the current pedagogical practices towards a learning-oriented active methodologies.

For this reason, the authors propose methodological ‘outcomes’ approach for the assessment of the ability to use the techniques, skills and tools for engineering practice issues within the Materials Science subject in the Chemical Engineering Degree. A methodological tool based on a questionnaire to integrate the evaluation of activities related to instrumental skills, thus, the generic competence “Specific Instrumental” as defined in our university, is proposed in this work.
Two practical sessions were selected for the study, one of them carried out in a laboratory and the other one using a computer software. The questionnaires were distributed at the end of each session and marks were not weighted for the final grade, thus eliminating any pressure on the students. The set of questions focused on the skills over the instrumentation used at three different levels to assess the knowledge acquired by the students. The questions were mainly oriented towards methodologies that allow addressing the resolution of general or specific problems. In addition, it allowed for the evaluation of the degree of ability and comprehension about the operation of the instruments used. Thus, this paper analyses in detail the preliminary results obtained using the evaluation tool developed in our department during the learning experience explained.

Keywords:

Specific Instrumental, Materials Science, Skills, Evaluation Tools.