Abstract:

At present, universities all over the world are implementing a competence-based type of teaching and learning, in line with the active methodologies approach that has become mainstream due to a series of pedagogical, social and practical reasons. Evaluation of the level of acquisition of those competences by students is also a major concern for universities. It has been suggested that an ideal way of evaluating certain key competences is by integrating authentic tasks in the classroom that are evaluated through carefully designed rubrics. Currently, task-based learning is one of the most important active methodologies. The work described here is based on a teaching innovation project jointly proposed by the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and the Universitat Politècnica de València, in Spain, whereby a task-based approach is applied to the development and evaluation of two key cross-curricular competences; namely Effective Communication and Comprehension and Integration, in a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) higher education context. These competences are part of the list of 12 generic competences that have been defined by the Spanish institution as a strategic priority. In this project, two authentic tasks are used in lectures of Civil Engineering to improve both subject-matter knowledge and the English language skills of students, as well as to develop the two above-mentioned competences, which are crucial for Engineering students. The first task is the careful study and comprehension, at both content and language levels, of recent research papers which are relevant to the discipline. The second related task is the oral presentation, in groups, of personal conclusions drawn by students after reading and understanding the given research paper. The objective is for students to learn both engineering-related content and technical English by means of the activation and integration of fundamental skills, such as reading, speaking, listening, critical thinking, creativity, teamwork and vocabulary acquisition, among others. The project also suggests a rubric-based methodology to carry out the evaluation of the competences. The paper introduces, firstly, the theoretical base underpinning the project. Then, the project is presented, with a special focus on its pedagogical rationale and its practical implementation. Finally, a framework is suggested for the development and evaluation of generic competences through the integration of authentic tasks in a CLIL-based higher education engineering context, with a view to making the experience useful for other similar educational environments.

Keywords:

CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), competence-based learning, task-based teaching, active methodologies, Effective Communication.