Abstract:

This year in all the IUT (University Institute of Technology) of France began a new technological diploma following the baccalaureate called "University Bachelor of Technology" (BUT). The BUT is a state diploma that is obtained at the end of a three-year post-baccalaureate course, so at Bachelor level (180 ECTS credits). Its validation is not only based on continuous assessment like the previous diploma (DUT, two-year technical degree) but above all on a competency-based learning.

Thus, the core of this diploma change is to have a skill approach instead of a traditional approach. Credits are obtained through validation of semestrial Teaching Units of each skill block. This new way of teaching has already been experienced in Canada and Belgium, but is quite new in France.

This huge change came with the need to create various Learning and Evaluation Situations (LES) built around a meaningful and challenging project that enables the development and evaluation of the skills. This also requires to aggregate all the "old" lessons as resources for this new way of teaching.

Our diploma dealing with Electrical Engineering and Industrial IT (GEII), we decided to make every student build up a cheap line following robot from scratch that they could keep at the end. This work has to be done in teams from two to six, with project management, during the full year. The choice of this project is linked to our core skills (electronics, PCB, energy, command-and-control and automation).

The aim of this article is to share the way we built the documents for the progression (deadlines, reports, concrete realizations), the face to face interactions as well as the autonomous work, the evaluations and how we tried to link the activities with the other resources (lessons, experimental work, communication).

The students also had to work on their portfolio as a self reflection on how they learn and how they can improve their skills. We also discuss the impact on students' learning after the first year and what we decided to change for the second year before concluding on how this new approach can be interesting in our day to day pedagogy.

Keywords:

Competency-based learning, Learning and Evaluation Situations, Portfolio, Robotic project, skill, Electrical Engineering and Industrial IT.