RUBRICS TO ASSESS STUDENT COMPETENCES: A STRUCTURED APPROACH

Many attributes are required of an engineer graduating into a global world and it is notoriously difficult to capture all the components of a student’s knowledge, acquired skills and abilities required by employers in a holistic manner. This methodology for the assessment of student competences is defines three distinct components of professional quality as a function of overall attainment: 1) knowledge and skills, 2) thought-literacy and 3) personal characteristics connected to the profession. A special ‘integral competence index’ was then established to define weighted relationships between the components of thought-literacy and three quality indexes: intellectuality, skills and psychological abilities.
In order to visualise the results of this methodology and demonstrate an overall student competence assessment, a functional 3-dimensional structure of logical; psychological and pedagogical coordinates was proposed. The output is expressed as a volume of information that is equal to the product of indexes. Rubrics were further developed to assess students’ competence based on these components and expressed as a 5x5 table.