The use of rubrics in higher education and competences evaluation

Competency-based learning has produced a transformation of higher education to meet the current demands of training. The use of rubric at universities is considered an innovative teaching tool that promotes a competency evaluation for both students and professors. However, there's still not a solid field of knowledge to provide evidence of the rubric use made by educators as skills evaluation tool. In this paper, 59 rubrics by several educators and three Spanish universities were analyzed. The comparative analysis lets us know how professors are using rubrics to evaluate or not competencies. Moreover, the type of tasks for its use is considered, as well as technical and pedagogical aspects that professors include in its design. The results show that competency-based learning is not yet integrated into usual teaching practice, and there are relevant gaps in the design and use of rubrics for evaluation. Furthermore, the conclusions can identify training needs of faculty to use rubrics to evaluate competencies.