STUDENTS COMPETENCES IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION SUBJECTS BY TEACHER’S PERSPECTIVE

The evaluation of the competences acquired by the students in the context of a university education system is needed to enable professors to develop teaching-learning processes tailored to students’ needs. Authors’ previous research have analysed in depth the profile of the acquired competences of the bachelor students in Business Administration subjects. These previous works have been published or presented in some international education conferences. Nevertheless, we are currently investigating about the teacher’s perspective in order to know if the point of view of students and the professors are consistent.

In that sense, the main goal of this paper is to analyze if the profile of the acquired competences of the bachelor students matches with the competences that the professors believe that the students have developed across the course.

The data collected, comes from two sources. On the one hand, students of Business Administration of University of XXXX evaluated their own competences and; on the other hand, professors of University of XXXX assessed the competences acquired by students. The set of competences were developed by Kantola (2009), Kantola et al. (2005) and Vanharanta (2005) were measured in the platform called Evolute (specifically, we have used the Cycloid tool to assess the competences).

The evaluation with Cycloid is based on the indirect self-assessment of broad competences. The Cycloid model provides an evaluation of 30 broad competencies. These competences can be grouped in two main dimensions; personal and social. For each competence, respondents identify the current and desired levels scores.

Students are asked to respond to a series of statements related to their daily work, answering based on their perceptions rather than performance. For each statement they are asked to identify their current level of competences and indicate the level they would like to achieve (desired level). Two situations are possible:
(1) to identify competences for which the student perceives the need to learn, then further teaching and training could usefully be focused, and
(2) to identify competences in which the students considered they have the level required.

Professors are asked to respond to a list of the same competences than students. Similar, in this case, for each competence they are asked to identify the student’s current level and indicate the level they would like that the students should achieve (desired level).

Comparing perceptions about the competences that students believe they have and should have, with the competences that professors believe that students have and should have will shed light into any discrepancies that should be corrected. These differences should serve for a deep analysis, made by the professor, in order to know if the syllabus of their subject is appropriate for the acquisition of the competencies required by the students.

References:
[1] Kantola, J. (2009). Ontology-Based Resource Management. Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing, 19(6), 515-527.
[2] Kantola, J., Vanharanta, H. & Karwowski, W. (2005). The Evolute system: A co-evolutionary human resource development methodology. In W. Karwowski (Ed.), International encyclopedia of ergonomics and human factors (pp. 2894–2900). Boca Raton: CRC Press.
[3] Vanharanta, H. (2005). Plenary at HCI International Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, 22-27 July.