Abstract:

European higher education landscape is being built on the grounds of the Lisbon and Bologna Processes for education. The leitmotifs of the new educational scenario are “lifelong learning” and “knowledge society”. This European vision imposes an educational challenge on education standardization and some canonical key-concepts such as “making new knowledge” and “building new competences and skills”, these consisting of a mixture of professional, social and horizontal competences. Horizontal competences can be formulated in terms of some skills emphasizing aspects such as “learning to learn” or “cultural awareness”.
We have been involved, during the 2010/2011 academic year, in the development of an implementation plan for the horizontal competences in the context of the Electronic Engineering degree at the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST) of the University of the Basque Country (EHU). Nine degrees are offered to students in this center in which a relatively significant number of subjects are shared among the different degrees. The curricula of each degree was independently developed on the basis of the different white papers for each scientific/technological discipline. The definition of horizontal competences was conducted in parallel during the development of curricula, so different formulations were finally approved and are now under implementation. One obvious first task is to redefine and standardize the horizontal competences among the different degrees.

In the Electronic Engineering degree, 13 specific (vertical) and 8 horizontal competences were originally identified. Thereafter, it could be seen that the number of approved competences was too high to implement and evaluate them efficiently. So, there was a need of reformulation of the generic competences, with the following aims:
1. A synthetic formulation
2. Clearer objectives
3. Coordination at several levels (in subjects shared by degrees, along different years of the degree, in different courses at the same year).

The analysis and reformulation of competences was carried out taking into account:
(1) Overall objectives of the degree;
(2) Proficiency levels per academic year;
(3) Methodology and
(4) Evaluation.

Four generic competences have been finally proposed:
1. Driving the knowledge in a properly way (knowledge management): documentation, critical analysis, skills for design simulations, experiments and prototypes.
2. Having skills in planning and organization and applying appropriate methodologies both in groups or/and individually: teamwork, planning and organization of task and projects, proposal and project management, working methodologies.
3. Communicating well orally and in writing (communication skills)
4. Showing a resolute, proactive, enterprising and creative attitude, with autonomy capabilities within the ethical and responsibility.

We have been working in the design of learning outcomes, the indicators and the descriptors of proposed competences for the whole Electronic Engineering degree. Besides, we have gone deeply into their development in each year. We have proposed domain levels, criteria and evaluation tools for each proposed competences. Finally, we draw out some conclusions and future work to improve the development of horizontal competences and the processes of coordination.