Abstract:

Current degrees belonging to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) are changing the learning towards a competency-based education. The Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) has defined a set of generic competencies that consists of a total of 13 competencies to be trained and assessed in different subjects forming part of a degree. In the later years, the process of implantation of new degrees has become an opportunity to test how to group different profiles of skills.

In the UPV the competency “knowledge of contemporary issues” has been defined as the need to understand political, social, legal and environmental issues and value related to the field of knowledge. This competency also takes into account the mechanism of expansion and dissemination of knowledge.
In the School of Architecture it has been noticed that students often face learning obstacles, such as lack of creativity and problem solving ability. Therefore, the implementation of the competency "knowledge of contemporary issues” should be used as a learning strategy in the process to understand and solve related difficulties.

This paper presents the the learning experience carried out in the subject of Architecture Design in 2016 for a group of 25 students. This experience consisted of a critical reinterpretation and creative proposal of a social space of a small area of the city center of Valencia. Firstly, the study used cognitive development teaching activities and a learning process based on analogical thinking and analogical reasoning to build the social learning model. Secondly, the social learning model was implemented in the architectural design of the space where this competency was introduced related to the contents of the course.

The assessment of the competency was carried out using the UPV rubrics and a questionnaire where the answers were statistically analysed and compared in order to measure the differences before and after the teaching activity. The results indicate that the social learning model is proven helpful in inspiring the students’ creativity. This was achieved by converting new knowledge of architecture design into schemas and hence retaining the new knowledge for future application. The acquisition of social learning model can be applied in the teaching of problem solving in other schools. More research can be done in the future to further confirmation of its feasibility to promote effective learning.

Keywords:

Competencies, training and assessment, UPV transversal competencies, instructional learning, cognitive teaching, project-based pedagogy.