LEARNING PORTFOLIO AS A TOOL FOR ASSESSING COMPETENCES IN PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY

Physical Chemistry is a classic discipline in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Pharmacy curricula; its structure is based on many different knowledge areas, which may lead to an inappropriate, disperse and poor study of its contents. The introduction of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has triggered a deep review of the Physical Chemistry syllabus in the Bachelor in Chemistry. In addition it has led to an update and a redistribution of its contents in more basic and condensed subjects that deal with fundamental aspects, leaving all specific and more novel (advanced) contents for Master and Doctorate studies. This new redistribution should have a set of proper assessment methods in line with the new EHEA formative plan, focused on competences and their continuous evaluation. In this work, a new evaluation model is presented based on the use of the learning portfolio as working tool; each student is continuously assessed not only from a grading perspective but also from a formative point of view, i.e. with an explicit indication of the level achieved for each competence.