Abstract:

Generic or transversal skills are essential for finding, retaining or developing the individual position in society. Before the Bologna process, higher education institutions had extensive experience in providing subject-specific competence, but study programs have more recently been designed in order to develop all components contributing to individuals’ education and, in particular, to develop competencies beyond a particular discipline. Institutions have defined a list of general competences that their graduates should meet, for which degrees and courses explicitly include these competences development and, in many cases, the degree of achievement that they should meet. In addition, degrees are at present under certification and accreditation processes in order to guarantee international standards, which definitely has an impact on transversal competences development and assessment.

In the case of UPV (Universitat Politècnica de València), a total of 13 transversal competences (TC) have been defined in an institutional project. Among them, time-management and continuous learning, both being addressed in the present contribution. In spite of institutional support, lecturers usually express their worries about the activities which are appropriate to help develop transversal competences and how to assess them. I other words, assessing general and key competences continues to be a challenge for university teachers, for which sharing experiences on this matter is essential to help peers in this critical issue.

The present paper focuses on the experiences of developing two TC in different courses, by describing the activities and assessment methods used to evaluate time-management and continuous learning in second and fourth year of the same degree (degree in Biotechnology, UPV). The manuscript discusses how the activities planned take into account the students’ maturity level and background, as well as the fact that focusing on different command levels determine not only the activities but also the assessment methods being used.

Another subject considered in the present paper, as a part of the discussion, is the debate on the need (or not) for grading the degree of achievement of a specific TC. Taking into account our experience, grading is not really essential, since it is the process itself that should ensure TC development; accordingly, the proper activities and context must be provided in order to facilitate TC development.

Keywords:

Transversal competences, competence development, assessment, methodology, undergraduate level.