Abstract:

Since Spain joined the European Higher Education Area, a paradigm shift has occurred and teaching now focuses on the students and their ability to acquire competences. The achievement of certain competences developed in the subject is easily quantifiable, while others are more difficult to assess, or even almost impossible, through synthesis tests. This is the origin of this paper where we present a competence-based assessment of the subject Basic Statistics from the Business Administration and Management degree from the University of Valencia.

To enhance student motivation, we designed a practical activity, which consists in a descriptive statistic study by collecting a sample of 1599 people, which tries to determine the reasons of the decline in attending cinemas in recent years in Spain, where there has been a considerable decrease in the figures of spectators, thus causing a crisis in its film industry.

Therefore, during the year 2013/14, 240 students enrolled in Basic Statistics performed a practical activity of descriptive data analysis. A questionnaire was designed with 25 different variables. By applying the knowledge and competences acquired over the semester, students had the tasks to analyze the data and be able to communicate the results obtained, by submitting a written report.

In this study we analyzed the learning outcomes that students should acquire by the end of the course to assess competences. The assessment of the learning outcomes was performed by means of a table in which each item appears and they are quantified through a Likert scale (1-5). This evaluation system allows to measure student’s competence acquisition in a simple but effective way; consequently, the difficulties detected with the measurement of student competences are easily solved.

Keywords:

Assess competences, acquisition skills, statistics activity.