Abstract

GERMAIN, Francisco  and  PEREZ-RICO, Consuelo. Competency-based education as a way to facilitate the take over of learning by the student. FEM (Ed. impresa) [online]. 2014, vol.17, n.1, pp.11-19. ISSN 2014-9840.  https://dx.doi.org/10.4321/S2014-98322014000100004.

Introduction: Traditionally, the students' role has been a passive element in the framework of a one-way teaching process, where students had few perspectives of controlling their learning and, therefore, of actively getting involved on it. Materials and methods: In order to promote the take over of learning by the students, a series of strategies, which consisted on applying a series of transversal competences, were designed. The subject chosen for this purpose was Pathophysiology, belonging to the Degree in Physiotherapy of the academic year 2011/2012, because the relative high amount of seminars in this subject enables a great student participation. Then, a range of competences were selected, such as the ability to search for information and critically evaluate it; the capacity for analysis and synthesis; the capacity to adequately answer questions; the critical thinking ability concerning what has been read and heard, that is translated into the capacity of making questions about the subject; and, finally, the clarity and quality when presenting orally a previously proposed topic. Results: With the implementation and development of the designated competences, in addition to the enhancement of these skills in the students, their scores improved in a statistically significant manner with respect to those from the two previous years (Fisher's exact test). In the academic year which this innovation was implemented, 82% of the students passed the course in the ordinary call, as compared to 53% and 44% of the two previous years. Conclusion: The activities carried out to achieve the acquisition of key transversal competences have facilitated the students to take over control of their own learning and, importantly, to make it more efficient.

Keywords : Competency-based learning; Learning models; Transversal competence.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )