Abstract:

In order to respond to the needs of today's society, the university is committed to training in specific skills for each professional field, but also to training in generic or transversal skills. This implies broadening the vision and mission of university education, committing to comprehensive training, which includes both training in specific and transversal skills, where the students have a fundamental role in theirs learning process.

In this context, the Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid proposes an educational accompaniment, through a mentoring program for its first-year students, with the aim of accompanying them in the development of those transversal skills necessary in their personal and professional maturity process.

This program is articulated with six individual meetings throughout the academic year, where students are accompanied on their journey of personal development, based on their own experiences. After each of the meetings between pupil and mentor, the pupil must carry out an autonomous work of reflection, and another of personal application, which promotes significant learning and transferable to his life. These works gradually form a portfolio.

The portfolio, understood as a learning and evaluation technique, which allows the student to collect all the work he or she has done during the year, reflects the learning derived from these academic tasks. In our case, these learnings are related to the acquisition of a series of personal competences that favour the social responsibility inherent to the profession that they need to develop for their future. It is considered that through this we can obtain a holistic and integrating vision of all the learning generated throughout the first year as a university student.

From the results obtained through the evaluation system of the mentoring program made by the students, it is observed that this program is a clear example of methodology that enables the experiential learning of the student, since, working on their own experience and making a critical analysis of it, they can reach new learning to put into practice in other situations, which facilitates the acquisition of personal skills. These learnings, to the extent that they are incorporated into life, are known as significant and transferable learning.

In short, this experience suggests that both experiential learning and portfolio technique are appropriate in the development of personal skills, especially intrapersonal ones.

Keywords:

Experiential learning, portfolio, transversal skills, educational accompaniment, significant learning.