Abstract:

This paper focus in the assessment of the subject Innovation Management in Civil Engineering of the Masters in Planning and Management for Civil Engineering. The subject comprises diverse practical assignments related to the theoretical content on innovation techniques. The evaluation of the course consists of periodical deliveries, which are the object of this paper. A conceptual map is developed by the students to assess its ability for synthesis, which requires certain degree of ripeness and concentration. A specific assessment rubric is used for the assessment. The results are then compared to the marks of the remaining deliveries. In this respect, these marks are compared to the marks obtained for the critical thinking transverse competence. Results manifest that the critical thinking is quite related to the interest of the student on the course.

The assessment of the conceptual map with the four criterion of the assessment rubric shows that there is certain correlation among them.

The criteria are:
breadth of the net (1),
precision of concepts (2),
comprehension of concepts (3) and
degree of deepness of the topic within the map (4).

Further, 3 and 4 exhibit significant correlations with the argumentation of the student’s opinion of the topic. Finally, the variability of the evaluated competences regarding the marks of the evaluation map is studied. Thus, the assessment of the argumentation in an opinion question can be explained at a 36.6% by means of an additive regression model.

The featured analysis aims not only to obtain the relationship between the academic performance and the transverse competences, but understand how equivalent the assessed activities are to one another to further improve the course curricula. We can conclude that the use of assessment rubrics looks practical for argument-based assessments, i.e., the professor, in the role of evaluator may incur in a biased judgement because of its own personal opinion.

Keywords:

Critical thinking, argumentative ability, conceptual map, postgraduate competences, academic performance.