Abstract:

Since 2019, the Colombian Ministry of National Education, considering the relevance and social function of higher education, has established guidelines to strengthen the Quality Assurance System for education by incorporating student Learning Outcomes (LOs) and the results of progress in formative, academic, teaching, scientific, cultural, and extension activities in educational institutions.

Objective:
Incorporate student LOs and progress results in formative, academic, and other tasks; through curricular harmonization in the programs of the Faculty of Mines of the National University of Colombia, presenting the case of the civil engineering career.

Methodology:
To adopt these guidelines, the National Council for Higher Education updated the high-quality accreditation model in 2020, including the recommendations made by the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education to the National Accreditation Council. For its part, the Faculty of Mines embraces these national guidelines by formulating a curriculum harmonization process that responds to the reflective exercise of the academic community to think about and incorporate into its academic and pedagogical work the relevance and currentness of its programs, the implementation of competencies and LOs and the mechanisms of evaluation, monitoring and improvement of its programs.
At the faculty level, curricular implications are recognized at three levels: Macrocurricular, Mesocurricular and Microcurricular.
Because the curriculum harmonization process is still being finalized, the methods for evaluating its effectiveness and positive impact on students and teaching have not yet been defined. However, a Map of Formative Intentions for the Civil Engineering Program has been created. This serves as an integrating tool that demonstrates the coherence and alignment between the internal and external context analysis, the identified training needs, the subject matter, the competencies, the program, LOs, and the proposed curriculum structure.

Results:
Several generic LOs have been identified at the Faculty of Mines, which comprises 13 engineering programs. These include solving complex problems, communicating effectively, evaluating ethical and social responsibility principles and behaviors; and recognizing the need for continuous and autonomous learning, among others.
The phases of the harmonization process begin with the Program Context Study (Educational Intentions) and end with the Specification of LOs, defining Evidence, Methods, Strategies, and Training Guarantees.
Specifically for the civil engineering program, milestones were identified in the External Context, encompassing the most important aspects that must be integrated into the training of civil engineers to ensure they are prepared for the current and future challenges of the sector. These are complemented by milestones in the Internal Context, which correspond to the opinions of a sample of respondents who provided their views on the aspects they consider most important within the profile of a civil engineer.

Conclusions:
The development of the curriculum harmonization proposal was done systematically and reasonably with the participation of the community in different activities seeking the relevance, coherence and alignment of the curriculum with current trends in engineering education, the requirements of the external context and reinforcing the internal context following institutional guidelines.

Keywords:

Competencies, curriculum harmonization, learning outcomes.