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Perception of the acquisition of generic competences in engineering degrees

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze what generic competencies at the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya (UPC BarcelonaTech) are most evaluated by the teaching staff belonging to the first curricular block of industrial engineering degree courses at the Barcelona Escola Universitaria d’Enginyeria Técnica Industrial, and also to relate these competencies to the assessment tools and the types of session most frequently used in the evaluation of the said competencies. Furthermore, it is intended to determine the level of acquisition of the generic competencies (related to their profession) as perceived by the students themselves during their course of study and their completion of the Final Year Degree Project (Project Trabajo Final de Grado—TFG). To that end, a group of 140 university teachers and a population of 145 students were each the object of an anonymous online survey while they were engaged on the Final Year Degree Project (TFG). The results of this survey show that the competencies most evaluated by the university teaching staff, in order of importance, are as follows: autonomous learning, the effective use of information resources, teamwork, and good oral and written communication, while the most frequently used tools of assessment are the rubrics. Autonomous learning is the generic competence perceived by the students as being the one most acquired during their completion of the TFG.

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Notes

  1. http://www.abet.org/about-abet/publications/historical-documents/.

  2. http://www.onlineethics.org/Education/instructessays/herkert2.aspx.

  3. http://www.upc.edu/.

  4. http://www.unideusto.org/tuningeu/.

  5. https://www.upc.edu/rima/grups/grapa.

  6. http://www.ice.upc.edu/ca.

  7. http://www.ice.upc.edu/ca/innovacio-docent/publicacions_ice/arxius/2_avaluacio.pdf.

  8. http://www.euetib.upc.edu/els-estudis.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude for the collaboration of the UPC (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Barcelona Tech) Institute of Education Sciences (ICE) who provided the GRAPA (Grup d’Avaluació de la Pràctica Acadèmica) group together with both financial and material resources.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department d’Expressió Gràfica a l’Enginyeria, Escola Universitaria d’Enginyeria Técnica Industrial de Barcelona (EUETIB), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain

    Noelia Olmedo-Torre

  2. Departamento de Ingeniería Química, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Industrial de Barcelona (ETSEIB), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain

    María Martínez Martínez

  3. Department de Ciències de la Computació, Escola Universitaria d’Enginyeria Técnica Industrial de Barcelona (EUETIB), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain

    Antoni Perez-Poch

  4. Departmento de Proyectos de Ingeniería, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Industrial y Aeronáutica de Terrassa (ETSEIAT), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Terrassa, Spain

    Beatriz Amante García

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  1. Noelia Olmedo-Torre
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  2. María Martínez Martínez
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  3. Antoni Perez-Poch
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  4. Beatriz Amante García
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Correspondence to Noelia Olmedo-Torre.

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Olmedo-Torre, N., Martínez, M.M., Perez-Poch, A. et al. Perception of the acquisition of generic competences in engineering degrees. Int J Technol Des Educ 28, 495–506 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-016-9390-z

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