Development and assessment of key skills in undergraduate students: An action-research experience

Introduction

The Bologna process aims to create a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by 2010 (The Bologna Process 2009). All across Europe, countries and universities, are engaged in a modernization’s process. Therefore, a great transformation must be assumed from the point of view of the educational management as well as the intervention in the classrooms.

The first consequence of the Bologna declaration is the valuation of each course through the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) (2009), which is based on the student workload required to achieve the objectives of a programme, in terms of the learning outcomes and competences to be acquired. As Spencer and Spencer (1993) have shown, ‘the better the fit between the requirements of a job and the competences of a person, the higher the person’s job performance and job satisfaction will be’.

The second consequence of Bologna involves a great challenge: the formation must be tied with the professional demands by means of the development and assessment of the key skills (Fallows and Steven 2000). In Harvey et al. (1997) we found that employers want people who are going to be effective in this future, changing world. The employees must be flexible, adaptable, quick to learn and able to deal with change. They must be people who can rapidly adapt themselves to the workplace culture, take on responsibility for an area of work, and perform efficiently and effectively. Therefore, necessary changes in teaching must be carried out, but these changes cannot be done without the coordination of the implied staff (Rodríguez 2003; Zabalza 2000; Terrón et al. 2007; Learreta et al. 2006). We must therefore prepare students to engage in the issues of nowadays which means that young people must be able to work in interdisciplinary works (Boix Mansilla et al., 2000, 2007, 2009; Boix Mansilla, 2005, 2006).

As a result, the first scope of the work developed was firstly to make a literature review about key skills development in other universities than the Spanish ones in order to find a way to help our teachers to understand how to integrate key skills in the new degrees. 

In that sense a group of the academic staff at the Universidad Europea de Madrid (UEM) was created to generate some research about the new needs (Terrón et al. 2007). In this paper, we describe how we began to engage and make sense to the integration of key skills in different curricula. This was done under the scope of the new active teaching – learning methods and strategies within the approach EHEA.

The action-research methodology was followed (identification of a problem, consideration of different alternatives of action, taking an action and study of its consequences, making a critical reflection about them, review the actions and start again). That is, from the team reflection of the researchers we found results from whose analysis we took some actions to improve. So, each time that the researchers’ team made an action, a readjustment of the initial plan took place from its reflection and helped by all the experiences of the group.

Developing a Curriculum Integrating Key Skills for New Degrees

In recent surveys done to employers is found that they were looking for applicants who can communicate effectively, can work in teams, with good interpersonal skills, can solve problems, are flexible in their approach to work and so far (Ellis et al., 2004; Spencer & Spencer, 1993; Harvey et al., 1997). In spite of these surveys and of other studies and reports about the need of integrating the competences in higher education (Fallows & Steven 2000), it is well known that the university tradition is mainly academic. Traditionally in Spain, the academic staff has developed in their students some skills or competences (oral and written communication, team working, planning and problem solving, etc.) without being aware of it, without a previous planning neither a curriculum integrated approach and, by no means, an assessment and marking criteria. In response to employer expectations, Spanish universities are now focusing on development of generic skills in their new degrees’ curricula. Taking into account that graduates will enter into a competitive and fast-moving job market, educational institutions have the duty of transfer not only knowledge but also skills demanded from employers. In this way, many universities are proposing specific skills in every degree to be implemented in the context of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Communication skills, problem solving, working with others, information technology among others are some of the main key skills areas recognized by University of Salford –Manchester- educationalists according to employers’ interviewers (Key Skills in the University of Salford, 2009). The University of Nottingham is also working in the evaluation of key skills from the employer perspectives. They combine qualitative and quantitative research methods to include a review of key skills identified by professional bodies relevant to the different subject areas. One of their aims is to identify which skills are actually developed and which methods have been used for their development. Analytical and problem solving, team working and self-learning were some of the main skills developed (Ellis et al., 2004).

The main aim of this paper is to design the key skill curriculum adapted to new degrees in order to identify the key skills that employers desire from new graduates and to propose effective and easy tools to assess them. The first difficulty found was the lack of single, universally accepted names for each key skill to be developed, so a work of theoretical framework should be done. Therefore, we referred to several sources. First of all, it was consulted the skills included in the Tuning Educational Structures in Europe Project (González & Wagenaar, 2003) as well as Developing Skills in Healthcare (2009), in Oliver and Sanz (2007) and the work developed in the DeSeCo project (Rychen & Salganik, 2001, 2003; Salganik & Rychen, 1999; Rychen et al., 2003). Secondly, it was made a revision of the collegiate skills that appeared at the UEM Delphi project report (INFORME DELPHI: “Detection of skills asked by the employers in the new graduates”, 2001). Finally, official resources from Spanish Education and Science Ministry were consulted (Real Decreto 1393/2007, Orden ECI/332/2008, Real Decreto 55/2005) as well as studies made by others universities. For example, the Nelson Report (Nelson 2002), Employability Skills for the Future and the University of Sidney Reports (1997, 2000, 2000- 2004, 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b) in Australia; the Bennett, Dunne and Carré report (2000) in UK and many UK university studies like the report. An institutional approach to developing students’ transferable skills (Atlay and Harris 2000), the Embedding Key Skills within a Traditional University project, funded by the DfEE (Chapple & Tolley, 2000).

Weekly meetings of the research team were done under the action-research scope. From the reasoned discussions among researchers the main competences that UEM students must develop were decided, taking into account all the references detailed in the paragraph above.

Table 1 shows the consensus skill names adopted in our research group as we were pretending to adopt a unique denomination to avoid misunderstandings between the academic staff. It is important to note that the second column refers to what we called “other names” that was the names that appear in the bibliography sources consulted. Sometimes these “other names” refer to a developed competency level of the consensus one. We could say in these cases, that the consensus will be for a global aspect of the others.

In the next paragraphs, it will be analyzed how these chosen skills have been developed and assessed in EHEA degrees. 

Looking for Practical Teaching and Learning Resources to Develop Key Skills: The Templates

With the key skills that should be developed in a degree student in mind, each teacher thought about its actual development and possible proposals for improvement from their own subjects’ perspective. This work carried out a clearer definition of their descriptors, expectation and implementation. Our aim was to create a general template for all the key skills in order to provide a useful tool to academic staff with the skills development, assessment and marking. The previous experience gained on its implementation (Learreta et al., 2006; García et al., 2008) has been enhanced to provide both, the student and the teacher, the information needed in a more integrated and easy way to be handled.

To fulfill these templates, we thought about three questions: how to implement the key skills; which activities can be done to promote them; how to take an assessment and marking criteria. For every skill we look for proposing learning resources as handouts, worksheets, checklists and assessments guides which staff could use or adapt, as well as material about the skills and their development. The general organization of each template is like the example shown in table 2. It has been divided in five main sections: name, definition, development, assessment and references. It is very important to include in each worksheet a cell containing the references used to fulfill it.

Name of the Skill

The first argument shows the consensus name adopted among researchers and the next one other names included, as shown in table 1 in previous section. It must be remembered that it is very important that all the teachers of a degree use the same nomenclature for a given skill in order to avoid misunderstandings.

Definition of the Key Skill

This section covers what is necessary to understand the key skill, that is, the definition, the description, the required skills and other key skills that are developed from this one (table 2).

The definition has been taken from the literature we found about it. The description is the most important part of the worksheet. It provides both the student and the teacher, all the information they need to understand the competency. Looking at this list, they will know what they need to develop this skill and therefore what should be assessed. By giving a description of the skill, the academic staff and the students know which capacities they will develop throughout the course. It doesn’t mean that all the skills must be integrated in all the subjects, but from the collegiate action of the academic staff an optimal level of development of every skill must be acquired when they finish the degree. It is very important to indicate the relationship among the skills due to their cross-curricular theme. That is why it must be included in this section which key skills are needed to develop it (required key skill) and what competences will be developed from it.

Key Skill Development

Once the skill is defined, there are some changes needed in teaching methodologies to strengthen the development of workplace skills. The use of some learning methods and educational strategies (such collaborative learning, problem based learning, project based learning and case studies methodology) is very adequate to develop this kind of skills, but it is a hard change for teachers and implies a strong effort on coordination. The simplest way to develop that change gradually is to include in each subject some learning activities that facilitate key skill development.

In that way, some teaching and learning short resources for each skill are given at each worksheet. Let us remark that the first activity proposed is a briefing about the skill where the lecturer will explain the meaning of the generic skill, which activities could be done to implement it and how it would be assessed. The objective of this first activity is to put the pupil in the context of what is the “key skill activity”. Then a wide range of learning activities is proposed to develop that generic key skill. Teachers will choose from this list those they consider more suitable for their subject or maybe they will propose some others.

Key Skill Assessment

In this section essential information about the assessment is given (the indicators, the procedures and the tools) so the acquisition of the key skill level can be measured. The indicators must be adapted to each subject according to the program it is integrated and its characteristics. These indicators establish what will be assessed for each key skill. They will be given as list of specific items more focused to the assessment than those mentioned in the description. The indicators must be SMART, that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time of completion, but they can be both quantitative and qualitative. Rate of done activities, rate of attendance team work session or results in peer-assessment are some of the indicators that can be used as it can be seen in table 2.

In order to measure the skill level acquired by the student with validity a series of procedures must be given as, for instance, observational techniques, per appraisal and selfreport procedures. From the list given, the teacher can use a combination of assessment procedures always estimating their validity, reliability and fairness for each activity. Finally, several assessment tools are proposed in order to help the teachers to mark these activities avoiding the own subjectivity of the general skills. 

Tools for Key Skill Assessment

There is no doubt about the difficulty of creating procedures and tools to assess and mark the skill level acquired by the students. When it was possible, rubrics were made with the help from our previous teaching experiences (García et al., 2010; Terrón et al., 2009a, 2009b; Blanco et al., 2007) and some Internet resources as, for instance, www.rubrics.org, so marking the students became easier for the teacher. The teacher has always to have in mind that rubrics should be used mixed with other methods of assessment (“as long as the rubric is only one of several sources, as long as it doesn´t drive the instruction, it could be conceivably play a constructive role”, in Kohn 2006). We proposed a long list of items for each skill in order to cover a wide range of possible situations and subjects, so the teacher will be able to choose the items more suitable for each activity. Table 3 shows some indicators of the oral and written communication skills that could be measured. For each indicator, four different situations were described in order to make easier the assignation of a record from 1 (never) to 4 (always). 

When the elaboration of rubric as the one showed at table 3 was too hard to create for some specific skills, a simpler one was made where the records were only “yes” or “no”. Table 4 shows an example of a rubric type y/n for the responsibility assessment. This template displays several particularities. Some aims are involved on it. On the one hand, the student’s point of view about the suitability of the activity to the learning process is gathered. On the other, we try to get student to think about his own learning process and has got an initial idea of his mark. This template could be of compulsory deliver for the students for each activity done (group or individual).

Another type of broader template is given in table 5. Each indicator or descriptor must be marked using a rating scale from 1 to 4 (1-never, 2-sometimes, 3-almost always, 4-always) according to the skill level acquired by the student.

All the assessments templates (tables 3, 4 and 5) could be used for each activity by the student individually (self-assessment), by peers (peer-assessment) and/or by the supervisor teacher. The staff can therefore adapt them to their courses, choosing the best indicators for the activity done. The final mark for the skill will be the average obtained. All of them have been used by teachers of different subjects and degrees at the Universidad Europea de Madrid with very good results (García et al., 2010).

The process to evaluate is a bit different when the students work in teams. The evaluation template will be filled after each session. It will be done first individually at home, making a selfassessment and an assessment to the other team members in an anonymous way. In the next team session, the group will collegiate an assessment for each member and for the team as a whole. Three marking will be obtained in this way (individual, collegiate and team self- assessment), and the staff will be the responsible to assign the weight of each item in the final mark. We must emphasize the importance of acting on the feedback on the teamwork. That is, the reader would ask the team to detect difficulties and areas of improvement, to enumerate positive aspects of the teamwork done and to find possible improvements to be made in the next sessions. 

First Assessment Experiences Done

The rubrics and assessment templates generated through this work have been implemented in some subjects. The information was collected just after each activity in order to have a quick feedback of the skill development. In this way, activities and assessment methods could be adapted to improve them. Results were collected in different ways: written reports excel files or using on-line platforms like moodle questionnaires (www.moodle.com). In most cases we tried to collect the results on-line, due to the advantages arisen from processing the data on a computer (statistics, graphics, etc.). The tools developed through this work can be used for self-evaluation, peers-evaluation as well as the evaluation made by the teacher. Students of the same subject (Fundamentals of Programming) in two different engineering degrees (Computer and Telecommunication) were involved the experience presented in this paper. Different activities were proposed to the students to work in team. Each team was formed by three students who had to solve several problems. An anonymous peer-evaluation was developed after these activities: each team member had to assess his/her partners anonymously. For it, they had to fill three templates for each skill assessed: Oral and Written Communication (Figure 1), Responsibility (Figure 2) and Team working (Figure 3). 

As shown, each template used contains between three and five items associated with the skill to be assessed. Students filled in these templates to assess their colleagues’ competences and attitudes. For each item, they had to select an answer among “completely disagree”, “disagree”, “agree” and “completely agree”. The items were drafted in order to associate answers to the perception of the skill development. For instance, choosing “completely agree” or “agree” answers means that the person who assess has a good perception of him/her peer skill development.

After analyzing the data, the first conclusion drawn is that the fellow students’ perception was quite positive. Their attitudes and skills were evaluated positively, with few “completely disagree” answers. In fact, over 90% are “agree” and “completely agree” in all items, being more than 50% “completely agree”.

A good working atmosphere was detected by teachers in the classrooms involved in this experience. This could be one important reason to support these good results. Active learning methodologies used in those groups, encouraged the students’ participation in their own learning process. Team working provided students the opportunity to strengthen the links between classmates, and also could improve their perception about their skills development. 

Following the action-research methodology, we made a reflection after each of the experiences made. During these reflections, the results of a group or even of a particular student were analyzed in order to point out the strengths and weaknesses in their skills development. From this analyze, teachers could identify which skills must be encouraged in future learning activities or courses. This particular experience was carried out with freshmen. Results helped teachers to plan their actions in subsequent assignments or subjects. For example, oral and written communication seemed to have the worst results, so teachers had the information to know where the emphasis on the skill development had to be made.

In order to know students’ opinions about this way of key skill assessment a questionnaire was proposed to them. Students were asked about several items related to the utility of making a key skill self-assessment and peer-assessment, its repercussions in their learning process and the need of reflecting those assessments in their final mark (Figure 4). 

In every item, negative answers (‘completely disagree’ or ‘disagree’), were less than positive ones (‘agree’ or ‘completely agree’). Although it seems that students are not sure about considering self-assessment results in the final mark, it must be mentioned that most of the students agree with reflecting their peer-assessment in the final mark.

Conclusions

In this paper, the work done by a group of professors interested in the development and evaluation of key skills in several degrees is exposed. Although it is acknowledged that students can learn key skills without being explicitly taught, it is important to assess key skill improvement, in order to make students aware of their key skill strengths and weaknesses.

One of the main contributions of this work is the elaboration of an actualized glossary of generic competences. A task of categorization and conceptualisation has been done in order to avoid the terminological ambiguity.

Having in mind which key skills should be developed in a degree, the coordination between the teachers of different courses and subjects in the same degree will be particularly necessary.

As a result of the process of reflection carried out during this experience, useful tools were developed which help teachers develop key skills in their students. Furthermore, assessment criteria are given, as well as grade descriptors and marking schemes of the competencies. Besides, some ideas to integrate guidance and feedback to the students are shown. 

The students’ perception about their fellows’ key skill development was quite positive. The students’ participation in their own learning process created a good working atmosphere in the classrooms involved in this experience. From the survey results about key skill assessment done, it seems that the students felt comfortable with this way of assessment and they thought it could be useful for their apprenticeship.

For future works, the information management should be improved in order to simplify the readers’ tasks. Working through an on-line campus would provide an automatic system for evaluation that will reduce teachers’ workload. This would also improve the feedback to the students giving them updated information about their learning process. Similar experiences, from other teachers and universities, would generate a larger amount of data that would help to improve this guide within an action-research process. 

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