Assessment of critical thinking within a subject related to mechanical engineering

Abstract

[EN] The international accreditation of the programmes for the masters' and bachelors' degrees offered at our university, together with the demands of the employers, have made it clear that the students' curricula should specify not only what they have studied, but also what they are actually able to do. Although, in the recent years the competence based curricula approach has been used in the development of the new masters' and bachelors¿ degree programmes within the European Higher Education Area, the assessment of the generic competences is still a pending matter. This work presents an outcomes approach for the assessment of the capacity for critical thinking within subjects related to mechanical engineering. In particular, this paper proposes a methodology in order to quantify the level of achievement and shows one tool developed for that purpose. The tool is based on the evaluation of some learning outcomes that can be observed by asking the students about different issues related to the contents of the course. Conclusions about preliminary results and the difficulties found to create this tool are also described here.