The Challenge of Developing and Assessing Transversal Competences in Higher Education Engineering Courses

Current higher education is based on a competence development approach including generic competences for the integral development of students. Degrees have been designed based on this paradigm centered on lifelong learning, self-regulated learning strategies and active methodologies in which the student is the core of the formative process, aiming at contributing to develop the key competence learning to learn. In the present paper, strategies for generic competences development and evaluation are discussed in the context of engineering and technical courses and degrees. Challenges in competence assessment as well as alignment of formative assessment, methodologies and learning outcomes are discussed based on a series of experiences. Experience evidence that competence development requires designing activities oriented towards competence development, in which learning outcomes and assessment procedures are clearly defined. The alignment of these three elements is the key for competence development since succeeding in a course by achieving the defined learning outcomes implies succeeding in the acquisition of the generic competences planned. Through the paper it is also discussed that competence evaluation is a challenge for university teachers, for which they will need to be formed and trained, and provided with institutional support.