A Multiple Criteria Decision Making Approach to Designing Teaching Plans in Higher Education Institutions

Pilar Laguna-Sánchez,Concepción De La Fuente-Cabrero,Mónica De Castro-Pardo,Jesús Palomo

doi:10.3390/math9010009

Pilar Laguna-Sánchez, Concepción De La Fuente-Cabrero + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/math9010009

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Journal: Mathematics	Publication Date: Dec 22, 2020
Citations: 7	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: King Juan Carlos University

Abstract

The involvement of competences in the teaching–learning planning process in Higher Education is essential for their success in the European Higher Education Area. This study presents a participatory multi-criteria model based on Voting Analytic Hierarchy Process (VAHP) analysis, focusing on the attainment of competences that permits consensus between lecturers and students in the design of teaching plans using two assessments: the assessment of competences by students and the lecturers’ assessment of the contribution of teaching strategies to the attainment of each competence. To validate the methodology, a survey was carried out to determine the preferences of 211 students on the competences of a quantitative subject in several business degrees and a survey of 11 lecturers to assess the contribution of the teaching strategies in the acquisition of each competence. The results show that practical lessons and group work should receive more importance in the teaching plans of the subject Financial Management according to the defined competences, the students’ preferences and the criterion of each lecturer for each teaching strategy. The results show the applicability of the participatory methodology proposed to formally agree on the design of teaching plans in higher education organizations between lecturers and students.

Highlights

Higher education organizations are involved in a changing environment, and their position in global contexts increasingly depends on their ability to adapt to the environment, together with the continuous improvement of teaching and research activities [1]
External stakeholders require transparency and accountability and the main challenge for higher education institutions lies in rethinking their role in the higher education landscape to consider and improve their performance profiles, i.e., how good higher education institutions are at performing their activities [2]
The main goal of this paper is to provide a Multiple Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methodology that permits the avoidance of divergences between the expectations of the students and both the competence/goal focus, related to some subjects, and the teaching strategies used by the lecturers to reach these goals

Summary

Introduction

Higher education organizations are involved in a changing environment, and their position in global contexts increasingly depends on their ability to adapt to the environment, together with the continuous improvement of teaching and research activities [1]. The orientation towards human capital formation, that is, professionals from an innovative perspective and oriented to the current labor market is a reality that cannot be overlooked [4] This requires paying attention to three issues: planning, the teaching–learning process and learning outcomes. Due to increased global competitiveness and increased expectation and challenges, higher education organizations need to carefully define their institutional profiles [2] Using this approach, strategic plans and governance processes can support branding policies to define the institutional profile from a management approach [3]. Both topics could respond perfectly to two key questions regarding management: how and when

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