Abstract:

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) learning process, proposed by the Bologna Declaration, is based on a competences model. Therefore, the teaching process, including the evaluation, must be designed and developed according to the competences that the students need to acquire. This paper presents a teaching innovation project which is the continuation of a previous experience in the use of rubrics to assess competences in Higher Education. In the previous project, we noticed some weaknesses. The students did not consider the rubric until the assessment moment and rubrics were limited used by students to self-monitoring their learning process contributing to their teaching responsibility and to self-evaluate their work quality and possible improvement. The teachers lacked experience and skills to create and develop rubrics to assess competences limiting the alignment of the evaluation with the teaching-learning process. Finally, it was observed a limited participation of all the involved in the evaluation process. In order to overcome these issues the present project aims to develop a validated use of rubrics to assess competences in Higher Education. In doing so, the following methodology in four steps was developed. In the first step, the teachers collected criteria and indicators for the assessment of competences in Higher Education, in our case for Agricultural Engineering degrees and Masters. In the second step, the students scored the criteria at the beginning of the semester in order to consider the rubric from the first moment of the teaching process. In the third step, the teachers discussed the indicators and criteria and create the rubric. In the fourth step the rubrics were implemented by teachers during the evaluation process and the students scored their level of acquisition of competences. Finally, the teachers discussed and compared data giving feedback to the rubrics for the assessment of competences. The results of the innovation learning experience showed an improvement in i) the alignment of the evaluation with the teaching-learning process, ii) the participation of all the involved the evaluation process, iii) the students´ self-monitoring of their learning process contributing to their teaching responsibility, iv) the students self-evaluation measuring their work quality and possible improvement.

Keywords:

Innovation, rubrics, innovation teaching project, validation, assessment.