Generic competences acquisition through classroom activities in first-year agricultural engineering students

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.