Abstract:

In 2005 the National Institute of Public Health performed an educational reengineering adopting an educational model based in competencies and the inclusion of the ICT in education. Since then, eight generations of master´s students in public health have been formed and around 20,000 students through continuing education programs. From that moment, an educational technology team was formed to look after the operation and implementation of this model. The backbone of the courses design was identified from a 2D competencies matrix, using the X-axis: (Competences or skills to be developed), and Y-axis (thematic content). The intersection of these two axes will be translated into learning activities.

In 2013, where the institutional interest is the strengthen and the rethinking of education, when questioning arise on how to improve the instructional design of e-learning courses and is detected the need to strength not only the design but how to ameliorate the ways the competencies evaluation is given.

One approach to achieve this task has been to add a new axis to the competencies matrix, the Z-axis cognitive level or knowledge application in-depth. The new intersection of these three axes, x-axis (competencies), y-axis (thematic content) and z-axis (cognitive level or knowledge application in-depth), is translated into a number of perfectly measurable learning evidences, allowing to generate a new evaluation system, a visual one, which provides greater clarity on the expected learning: the competencies semaphore.

It has been decided to use/develop this methodology in a training project in the state of Puebla, Mexico and is intended to design under this new scheme 13 different educational interventions, reaching a total of 2,000 students this year.

The firsts interventions designed under this methodology, have found diverse reactions from professors, policy makers and instructional designers, however the results are encouraging and positive. It has been more easily detected the congruence of the learning evidences vs. the competencies development and in this way to assure the quality of the e learning courses at the National Institute of Public Health.

The visual proposal of the Competencies Cube and its evaluation semaphore shows a possibility to improve the design, quality, and finally the learning process of the health professionals in Mexico.

Keywords:

Education and health, competencies evaluation, competencies cube, health professionals, Puebla, México, Educational technology.