Abstract:

Engineering is concerned with the art and practice of improving and changing the world we live in. Driven by the needs of society and business, engineers strive to find solutions to complex challenges. They work to achieve useful and beneficial outcomes that enhance the welfare, health and safety of all whilst paying due regard to the environment.

Nowadays, it is clear that students that study technological degrees, need to achieve not only technology related skills, but must also have developed transferable skills, additional to those set out in the technical or specific outcomes, that will be of value in a wide range of situations.

These skills can be names as generic competences such as team-working, problem solving or communication, both writing and speaking related.
Historically, it has been difficult to work on such competences in a technological environment, where physics, mechanisms, or organization related issues are the topics that guide students´ curricula. This paper seeks to show the approach used at Mondragon University's Engineering Faculty to work it out, and concretely, how generic competences have been integrated within students´ curricula and how they were mixed with the technological or specific competences.

One of the most important points when defining the integration approach was to do it in a natural way. Taking this into account, a holistic approach was used to make the integration happen. Therefore, a progressive and cumulative roadmap was designed, and the semester project was selected as the integrative element for making it possible.

The roadmap was divided into two parallel lines; the first one for personal and participation related skills, and the second one related to information and communication skills. Specific topics related to each line were discussed and finally set for their application. The key issue at this point was to define how to assess the acquisition of these generic competences by the students.

The paper that follows explains in a detailed manner the roadmap proposal defined for the industrial engineering degree as well as the semester project defined at each stage. Finally, an implementation example will be shown including the assessment rubric defined.

Keywords:

Generic competences, engineering degree, rubric, higher education students.