Abstract:

Since 2010 the Industrial Engineering School at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (ETSII UPM) has its Plan Study accredited by ABET. Since then a big motivation has been promoted from the management team encouraging teachers to work on the measurement and strengthening of student´s competences.

Generic skills or behavior acquired significant importance in the workplace, particularly in relation to project management. Because of this, and framed within the requirements of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the curriculum of the new degrees are being developed under the competence-based learning.

This situation leads to the need to have a clear measurement tool skills as a basis for developing them within the curriculum. A group of multidisciplinary teachers have been working together during two years to design measuring instruments valid for engineering students.
A deep analysis has been done to detect which are the trends in the extent of powers, particularly in colleges, to strengthen the teaching of competences. This analysis allowed validate measuring instruments that had already been designed on the competency framework and design those still required.

The measurements have been done in the subject Engineering Projects for the competences: an ability to communicate effectively, an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams and a recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning. Nearly 300 students from two different degrees (Industrial and Chemical Engineers) and three teachers have participated in the experience to obtain interesting results.
During the course students work in multidisciplinary teams using the methodology Project Based Learning. During this course the selected project was a wastewater plant.

Those results will help to improve the measurement instruments designed, facilitate and encourage the use of them.

The findings provide criteria for measuring improvement in ETSII UPM student´s skills and establish guidelines for the design of new curricula based on competencies.

Keywords:

Competences, Project Management.