Abstract:

Universities and higher education centres across Europe are undertaking reforms to construct the European Higher Education Area (EHEA).
One of the European Higher Education Area priorities is to make transparent the relationship between university education and transferable skills. It follows in the development of a competence based model for curriculum in universities.
Moreover, assessment strategies have to be developed in order to evaluate competences or learning outcomes.
In this work, we expose our experience in the development of assessments methods in the course of Introduction to Economic Statistics under their implementation of the first year of the bologna process.
The course Introduction to Economic Statistics is a basic training in a Business Administration degree in the the first undergraduate year. It is a course common to the degrees in Economics, Accounting and Finance and Labour Relations and Human Resources, which are also part of the course catalog of the School of Economics and Business in the University of Oviedo (Spain).
To assess learning in the Introduction to Economic Statistics, we employ a combination of assessments activities as the final exam and the continuous assessment which values the effort and work developed by the student throughout the course by means of different types of individual activities.
A good assessment strategy should evaluate the acquired competences but also discriminate among students.
In fact, the purpose of this study is twofold. First, to determine which assessment activity allows a better discrimination of the students by examining their results with information theory measures, and second, to explore which are the best assessments activities to evaluate the competences and learning outcomes of the course.

Keywords:

European Higher Education Area, competences, assessment, information theory.