Design and use of an evaluation tool for assessment of instrumental skills within a subject related to materials science

Abstract

[EN] The interest in a competence-based approach in the university, continues increasing at a considerable rate in the European Higher Education Area. Generic competences (specific of the sort of education) assessment is nowadays considered crucial to support socio-educational demands. Nevertheless, the methodologies for the assessment/evaluation of the generic competences and their inclusion in the curriculum has yet to be adequately achieved. Competency-based learning requires either the development of new evaluation tools or adjustment of the existing ones in order to support marking changes needed for new learning-oriented active methodologies. In this sense, questionnaires are an innovative educational tool for competence evaluation although the development of a solid body of knowledge is still a pending task. For this reason, this study proposes a methodological tool based on a questionnaire for rating the assessment (or not) of Specific Instrumental generic competence (instrumental skills), as defined in our university, by undergraduate students. In this regard, a practical intervention was designed to integrate the evaluation of activities related to Instrumental Skills in undergraduate students of Chemical Engineering, taking advantage of a computer practice session programmed as a part of the Materials Science subject. The appropriateness of the developed questionnaire, based on some learning outcomes, as a tool to properly score the competence of interest has been analysed by comparison of the obtained marks with the ones coming from more regular evaluation tools. The results may lead to some interesting conclusions to university professors when creating appropriate competency-based scoring questionnaires.