OUTCOME BASED EDUCATION IN LIFE SCIENCE SUBJECTS IN UNIVERSITAT POLITÈCNICA DE VALÈNCIA

Outcome-based assessment is a key point in university teaching. In Spanish curricula, this is indicated in the State regulations and legislation marks the basic skills required for each Spanish university degree. In addition, many programs have specific skills that provide them with professional powers. EUR-ACE or ABET accreditation agencies also set a series of outcomes that programs must consider if they want to obtain a positive accreditation. Even more, the universities themselves have added more outcomes to this extensive list. As a result, is frequent that not all the outcomes are specifically developed in the curriculum, which can have negative consequences. For example, ABET accreditation agency pose no objections to the list of outcomes, if it includes all the ones; they consider to be mandatory however, they require them to be developed through the curriculum and what is most important, to check that the students acquire them.

To facilitate this task, Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) has designed 13 outcome dimensions (OD) that grouped the outcome sets by the legislation, as well as accreditation agencies outcomes. This reduction in the number of outcomes facilitates planning activities to achieve their acquisition, as well as the evaluation process. In addition, the fact that they are common to all titles of the UPV, common efforts and collaborations among the different programs and degrees may be possible.

The objective of the work here presented was to adapt this new approach to some bachelor and master programs related to life sciences. The group of teachers has been working in educational innovation actions oriented to the teaching of the OD in different subjects. A selection of the OD more related to each of the subjects has been done and the teaching-learning methods more appropriate to each of them have been selected. These methodologies will be applied in the subjects of bachelor and master and its effect on the teaching of the subjects will be evaluated.