STUDY CASE: NEW METHODOLOGY TO DEVELOP AND ASSESS A PROGRAM OUTCOME IN THE CONTEXT OF A GENERAL EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS ENGINEERING

All over the world the market asks for highly trained engineers with metacognitive skills that allow them to apply the acquired knowledge. The enhancement of such skills is a responsibility of the higher education centers which have to propose educational programs addressed to develop and assess those skills.

In the frame of a continuous improvement and the pursuit of a national and international accreditation of the Telecommunications Engineering Degrees (ANECA and ABET respectively), the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid has already implemented an educational program oriented to ensure that the students achieve the skills required in an engineer. First of all, a set of Program Educational Objectives was defined. Then, for each Program Outcome (PO), some Performance Indicators were identified to measure the PO achievement. Since the outcomes assessment has to be done throughout the degree (four courses) a systematic assessment process had to be designed and applied to measure in which extent the students achieve the educational objectives. The first step in this process was the selection of the subjects where each program outcome could be assessed.

This work describes how the program outcome “An ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to organize, analyze, and interpret data” has been assessed in the subject “Physics” in the context explained above. It explains the Performance Indicators and the assessment methods used to measure the achievement of this ability. The assessment is based on a rubric that describes and classifies the level of achievement of each Program Indicator.

The assessment methods were also designed as a tool to help students to acquire the skill referred. In order to check if the students perceive the usefulness of the methodology and the assessment tools, the students were surveyed at the end of the course. Summarizing the results of the survey, we can say that the students also consider the assessment methods useful for their learning since they also help to improve the knowledge and the skills associated to the program outcome assigned to Physics.