IMPLEMENTATION OF A SELF-LEARNING ITINERARY TO IMPROVE THE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION OUTCOME IN THE MASTER OF FOOD SAFETY AND QUALITY MANAGEMENT

The ability to communicate effectively is an essential skill in today's world. Thus, a great effort is being done at the universities to help the students to reach this skill. In fact, in some universities, such as the Universitat Politècnica de València, to communicate efficiently is so important, that it is considered a student outcome that the graduates must demonstrate to obtain their degree. To help students to reach this generic outcome, it might be worked at class and evaluated. In this context, we present herein a pilot experience to help students of the subject “Audits of food quality”, belonging to the Master of Food Safety and Quality Management of the Universitat Politècnica de València, to develop their communication skills through a self-evaluation, co-evaluation and self-working. The work was divided in different parts. In the first part, students were asked to prepare a short presentation of a topic related to the subject. During the presentation, students were evaluated from their class-mates with the help of a rubric (second step). In the third step, a self-evaluation test was given to the students to help them to reflect on their weak and strong points in the preparation and execution of the oral presentation. Based on the mark of this co- and auto-evaluation, students were invited to work on specific activities to reinforce their weaknesses. At the end of the course, students were asked to prepare a new presentation, which was again evaluated by their class-mates and the teachers of the subject following the initial rubric. After the whole process, students had to prepare a portfolio that gathered all their reflections on their weaknesses, strengths and how the different proposed activities had contributed to improve their communication skill. Finally, to assess the efficiency of the proposed methodology, different approaches were followed: a comparison of initial and final marks, evaluation of their portfolio and a satisfaction test. Results shown that following the three assessment approaches the methodology contributed to the development of the effective communication outcome. Especially, students stated that they had worked hard during the course, but the result/effort ratio had been satisfactory