Abstract:

According to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), during their university studies, students should develop different general and subject-specific competences. The students should then acquire some learning skills that allow them to plan and manage their time, to adapt to new situations in order to work autonomously. There are many educational techniques and studies concerning this topic [1]. However, to date, many of the methodologies used for these purposes have been used in Social Sciences and not in Technical Science degrees. In addition, the specific systems for the evaluation of the "ability to work autonomously" competence are still under development.

In this context, our work will describe the program, methodology and the evaluation system designed for the development of the competence "ability to work autonomously" for first year Chemical Engineering students in the General Chemistry course at the Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain.

We have developed two novel Oriented Study Guides for two different didactical units (Chemical Equilibrium and Acid-base Equilibrium). A detailed working plan on the different theoretical aspects of the topic, as well as some other key examples and activities carried out by the students during their learning process, are described. This methodology should help in the development of the generic competences such as planning and time management, problem-solving and capacity of analysis and synthesis.

In addition we describe a system in which we have defined the first level of development of the competence "ability to work autonomously". This is based on the capacity of the student to incorporate and assimilate the learning methodology proposed. We have used five different indicators with four descriptors, in order to evaluate the students according to the extent of their development of the competence.

References:
[1] Villa, A. y Poblete M. “Aprendizaje basado en competencias (Competence based learning)” Ed. Mensajero, Bilbao (2007).

Keywords:

evaluation, ability to work autonomously, general chemistry, ehea.