Abstract
Generic skills need to be developed by university students to prepare them for lifelong learning. Higher education institutions play a key role in developing appropriate strategies for a competences-based approach with learning activities defined in terms of knowledge and skills. Although current knowledge assessments focus on individual grading, skill acquisition assessments require a social context. This paper proposes that generic skills can, and should, be developed from year 1 at university through active learning methods. The assessment of generic competences acquisition at university relies on the design and performance of useful activities rather than on specific outcomes in competence subjects of university programmes. Several active learning methods were applied to a first-year agricultural engineering course on Soil Science in the Polytechnic University of Valencia; these methods are described and their usefulness for students’ skills acquisition is analysed.
Highlights
In the knowledge society context, higher education has become part of a new way of creating and using knowledge (Ramsden, 2003)
How can we develop generic skills in first-year students? Skills acquisition must be integrated into a framework by gradually increasing their complexity level of ability
At the end of the academic year 2014–2015, the anonymous student answers showed their perception of the usefulness of the active learning methods employed (Fig. 2)
Summary
In the knowledge society context, higher education has become part of a new way of creating and using knowledge (Ramsden, 2003). The professionalisation of university curricula has brought about profound changes in the traditional academic education concept and faces the introduction of more professional courses into university systems. One response to these changes has been to clarify the relationship between university education and graduate skills, which has led to a competence-based model for curriculum development in universities: the Tuning Project. It started in 2000 as a European initiative to link the political Bologna process objectives to the higher education sector (González & Wagenaar, 2003). Universities allocate resources to ensure that these skills are developed by graduates
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