Abstract:

The importance of generic competences in the student's curricula is out of discussion. These skills are recognized to be critical in order to prepare the students for increasing social prosperity and their own individual wealth. The assessment of these competences is also of great interest for universities to promote students' mobility, by developing comparable criteria and methodologies. But also, it would be very useful for employers to have better information on the students’ skills. However, this assessment is still a topic under research.

The assessment of generic competences requires a change in the current pedagogical practices, as the lecture continues to be the dominant teaching method. The use of learning-oriented active methodologies is essential for the competences development, and it can be very helpful for their assessment as well. In fact, in the authors’ opinion, one of the main challenges when dealing with the assessment of generic competences is to create evaluation activities that truly force the students to put their skills into play.

The authors have followed an Assessment for Learning approach, as it seems very interesting to develop evaluation tasks that would not only allow to grade the students’ performance, but also to be useful for the students to improve their capacities and their learning experience.

This work presents an ‘outcomes’ approach for the assessment of different generic competences, such as problem solving, communication skills, practical thinking, e.g., within subjects related to mechanical engineering and materials science. Some experiences in different Master and Bachelor Degrees offered at the Technical University of Valencia (UPV) are described. For instance, a systematic tool based on a rubric for the evaluation of the generic competence "Design and Project", as defined in our university, in one subject dealing with Design and Application of Industrial Equipment. This tool is able to relate the evaluation of the four classic sections of a work (introduction, development, discussion and conclusions) with the items in the rubric, thus easing the evaluation task. Another example is the evaluation of oral communication skills by using a coevaluation methodology that has been carried out in the lab sessions of Materials Science within the Bachelor degree in Chemistry Engineering. The methodology of evaluation and the assignment proposed to the students in this experience tried to encourage them to participate more intensively in the continuous learning of the subject. Students were asked to prepare oral presentations ranging from 10 to 15 minutes to explain to their class mates a summary of the previous lesson. These presentations were evaluated by the teacher and the rest of the students with a rubric-based method.

The different strategies and evaluation tools (rubrics, check lists) used in these experiences are developed and explained. Some results regarding a first attempt to use these tools is also analysed in this paper. Finally, some conclusions are derived from these experiences in order to improve our proposal in the future.

Keywords:

Generic competence, evaluation.