Abstract:

Assessing transversal competences in design and engineering education remains a challenge due to the difficulty of translating these competences into observable evidence during practical activities. This study examines how PechaKucha (20×20) presentations can function as a structured learning situation that facilitates the observation and assessment of three transversal competences: innovation and creativity (TC2), teamwork and leadership (TC3), and responsibility and decision-making (TC5). PechaKucha is a concise and highly visual presentation format consisting of 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each, originally developed to promote clarity, synthesis and storytelling skills, which makes it particularly suitable for design education contexts. Prior research in higher education, particularly in engineering and design-related courses, has used the PechaKucha format to improve students’ oral communication, promote concise and well-structured messaging under strict timing constraints and support multimodal communication practices.

The intervention was carried out in Taller de Diseño III, a fourth-year course in the Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Design Engineering and Product Development at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). The main objective is to analyse how this presentation format enables the identification of competence-based performance indicators and to evaluate its perceived usefulness among students and instructors, focusing on how its time-constrained and narrative-driven nature supports observable behaviours related to transversal competences.

The methodology is organised into four stages:
(1) intervention design,
(2) implementation of the PechaKucha activity,
(3) competence assessment through a rubric, and
(4) perception analysis using Likert-scale questionnaires.

The assessment rubric was specifically developed for this study and included performance indicators linked to each transversal competence (TC2: innovation and creativity, TC3: teamwork and leadership and TC5: responsibility and decision-making), allowing systematic observation during the presentations. Perception questionnaires were administered to both students and instructors to gather quantitative feedback on clarity, usefulness and fairness of the assessment process.

Results indicate that the PechaKucha format facilitates the identification of observable indicators related to creativity, decision-making and collaborative work, particularly in how students justify design choices, distribute roles within teams and communicate innovative aspects of their proposals. Student perception data indicate that the PechaKucha format is valued for supporting concise and well-structured communication of design work, although some students reported limitations associated with the fixed timing of the presentation. Instructors reported that the fixed PechaKucha structure makes transversal competences easier to assess by increasing comparability across presentations and making performance evidence more observable.

The study proposes a scalable teaching micro-practice that integrates the visual communication strengths of the PechaKucha format with the formative assessment of transversal competences in design-oriented learning environments, providing evidence of its potential as a structured and efficient assessment strategy in higher education design courses.

Keywords:

PechaKucha, industrial design, transversal competences, innovation and creativity, teamwork and leadership, responsibility and decision-making.