Abstract:

The evaluation of the competences acquired by the students in the context of a university education system is essential to assess the learning process of these students. In that sense, the purpose of this paper is to study in depth the profile of the acquired competences of the bachelor students in several subjects related to the Management area taught in the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Barcelona. The actual students’ strengths and weaknesses will be analysed in order to improve the design and contents of the subjects taught, also increasing the quality of the curricula currently available.
This paper explains an experience in assessing bachelor student’s competences by applying a digital platform called Evolute developed by Tampere University of Technology in Finland (Achcaoucaou et al., 2012, Kantola, 2009; Kantola et al. 2005; Vanharanta, 2005). This is an ICT-based digital platform designed for the self-assessment of personal and social competences, and it uses different models of competences for a range of specific work role profiles. Each competence model is based on a specific ontology according to the target domain (Paajanen et al., 2009). In particular, we apply an evaluation tool called Cycloid, which was specifically designed for self-evaluating the project managers’ generic and specific competencies.
The authors of this research have previous experience in implementing Cycloid in different subjects in the area of Management. Specifically, in the previous edition of INTED 2012 the results of its implementation in the subject of Business Economics were presented (1). In this new edition, we present the results obtained from the use of the tool by 200 students of the Operations Management course.
This study highlights areas to which the Operations Management field should pay particular attention in order to encourage the acquisition of competencies among its students. Tools as the Cycloid can help university professors in designing the academic programmes as it allows assessing the degree of the initial students’ competences level and to compare it with the level required at the end of the course for their future professional development. An efficient assessment system as this is needed to enable professors to develop teaching-learning processes tailored to students’ needs. In addition, this kind of self-assessment benefits the three parties involved: students, university managers and organizations, and should be applied along the Bachelor as a transversal project and adapt the programs to achieve graduate students with higher levels of social and personal competences, as demanded by the labour market.

References:
(1) Miravitlles-Matamoros, P.; Núñez-Carballosa, A.; Guitart-Tarrés, L. Achcaoucaou-Iallouchen, F. Bernardo, M.; Hormiga, E. Implementation of an ICT-based tool for assessing students competences in business administration subjects. International Technology, Education and Development Conference INTED 2012, Valencia, March 5th- 7th (ISBN Proceedings: 978-84-615-5563-5; ISBN Abstracts: 978-84-615-5562-8).

Keywords:

Competence Evaluation, Operations Management, Cycloid.