Analysis of assessment tools used in engineering degree programs (original) (raw)

This work presents an analysis that has been done about the assessment tools used by the professors of the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya to assess the generic competencies introduced in the Bachelor's Degrees in Engineering. In order to realize this study has been elaborated a survey which has been done anonymously to a sample of the most receptive professors with the educational innovation of the own university. In total there were 80 professors who answered the cited survey, of whom the 26% resulted to be members of the evaluation innovation group (https://www.upc.edu/rima/ grups/grapa) the own university, GRAPA. This percentage represents a 47% of the total GRAPA membership, so from the most sensible professors with the evaluation matter in the university, closely the half has answered. The variables analysis realized using the statistical program SPPS v19 shows that for practically the 49% of the surveyed the rubrics are the most utilized tools to assess the generic competencies integrated with the specific ones, and of those the 60% use them frequently or always. The most evaluated generic competencies have been the teamwork (28%), problem solving (26%), effective oral and written communication (24%) and autonomous learning (13%) all of them very recognized competencies for the engineering profession. Two dimensional crosstabs analysis with SPSS v19 show that there is a significant correlation (Asymp. Sig. 0.001) between the type of used tool and the assessed competencies. However, any significant correlation has not been found between the type of assessment tool used and the type of subject, typology of evaluation (formative or summative), feedback frequency given to the students or satisfaction degree of the students so none of those variables have influence on the kind of used assessment tool. In addition, the results also indicate that there are not significant differences between the GRAPA's professorship and the remain of the surveyed.