Strategy for the Evaluation and Monitoring of Competencies in Engineering Programs to Improve Students’ Learning and Quality of Education

Pamela Hermosilla, Felipe Muñoz-La Rivera, Nicolás Ateaga and Elisa Gallardo
Additional contact information
Pamela Hermosilla: School of Computer Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Av. Brasil 2241, Valparaíso 2340000, Chile
Felipe Muñoz-La Rivera: School of Civil Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Av. Brasil 2147, Valparaíso 2340000, Chile
Nicolás Ateaga: Faculty of Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Av. Brasil 2147, Valparaíso 2340000, Chile
Elisa Gallardo: Department of Civil Engineering, Universidad de la Frontera, Francisco Salazar 1145, Temuco 4780000, Chile

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 21, 1-21

Abstract: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) framework propose the concept of competencies as a key cognitive, attitudinal, and procedural aspect aimed at the integral development of students, which implies a challenge in the way of evaluating them. Thus, the traditional monitoring of students’ progress through their grades is not enough, and monitoring competency is becoming more important. This research proposes a system for monitoring competencies in engineering programs. The system identifies the expected learning outcomes (LOs) of each course and cross-references them according to the ponderation of each evaluation planned. Subsequently, it links each LO with the competencies of the course, allowing the student to be monitored throughout their career. The strategy was applied to a civil engineering course. The students’ results, according to the course competencies, were obtained, linking them correctly with the LO and the grades obtained. The evolution of these competencies was evaluated until the end of the semester in which the students were taking the course. The analysis of the results shows the differences between the monitoring by grades versus by competencies, evidencing that there were cases in which a student passed the course by grades but failed to develop the expected competency.

Keywords: learning outcomes; competency-based education; quality education; monitoring system; engineering education; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/21/11721/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/21/11721/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:21:p:11721-:d:663227

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().