Abstract:

The reorientation of the competence-based learning process based on the framework of the European Higher Education Area is still in full development, so the methodologies for their development and evaluation are far from being consolidated. The Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) has developed special programs that define and describe in detail the specific and generic competences for each one adequate of its Bachelors' and Masters' degrees as well as for the particular subjects along them. In this engineering context, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship correspond to the generic competence 04 (GC-04) defined by the UPV in its institutional project, which the students must develop to be able to face problems of technical and technological nature with guarantees. From the wide range of possible solutions for these problems, those characterised by their economic efficiency and adaptation to the circumstances, which often imply being little invasive and meeting short deadlines for action, must be sought.

The present work is focused on the design of a teaching activity based on the realisation of an industrial project in which the aforementioned competence is promoted. This activity, in which almost 200 student teams (around 600 students) participated during two academic years (2019-2020 and 2020-2021), has been applied in the subject "Design and Application of Industrial Equipment" belonging to the Master's Degree in Industrial Engineering. The students face an open project with multiple alternatives within the context of the subject, from the analysis of the logistics distribution of an industrial warehouse to the design and calculation of a conveyor belt or a crane. It is required that the students propose new designs and/or plausible solutions to optimise industrial processes supported by a detailed economic report. All the projects have in common the implementation of creative and innovative techniques to generate technical solutions.

The academic works of both courses, in which Scamper, brainstorming and 3-6-5 are the most used techniques, are evaluated following a rubric agreed between the different professors of the subject to try to establish objective criteria and reduce as much as possible the influence of the professor on the results. A subsequent analysis of these results permits to establish a significant correlation that points to the influence of the GC-04 into the industrial project qualification and the final subject grade, inferring that the strengthening of competence prepares the student for the achievement of the objectives that must be acquired in the subject. Further work is needed to establish if the proposed rubrics manage to detect the degree of acquisition of the competence with an objective criterion.

Keywords:

Competence assessment, learning outcomes, innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship.