COMPETENCY-BASED EVALUATION IN FORESTRY ENGINEERING AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT DEGREE: RUBRICS AND INDICATORS

A working group of lecturers of University Castilla-La Mancha were involved in a competency-based evaluation for the learning of Forestry Engineering and Natural Environment Degree in the Higher Technical School of Agricultural and Forestry Engineering. Following the new competency-based learning model, as proposed by the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), we implemented in the evaluation process, objective elements to improve the student assessment.

For a more flexible work, the work was coordinated by independent subgroups of teachers conforming an independent cell to develop indicators and rubrics for concrete competences. Rubrics and indicators were developed to evaluate progress as an outcomes-based assessment. An online tool (SharePoint) was developed to share information related to rubrics, evaluations, assessment of competences, guides and forums. It was included as evidence of the levels of achievements in professional skills.

As results, we built a rubric for each competence and introduced two indicators to evaluate progress of students comparing results from same student groups or development in different courses. All that information was included in a report containing rubric scores and competence evaluation. The indicators pointed to implement findings, conclusions and recommendations to improvement the evaluation system.

As conclusion, we found that the proposed methodology simplified the process to implement the competency-based learning, standardizing the evaluation method and improving the knowledge of students by clarifying the expectations of teachers/trainers. In addition, indicators homogenized the evaluation process implementing improvements in the evaluation system.