Validating Bachelor of Engineering Competencies: An Internship-based approach

Abstract

During the last decade, Engineering programs in Chile have shifted their focus from a traditional content-based education model to a competency-based one. Although this approach has become popular and integrated into engineering programs, its effectiveness has not been fully validated. In particular, currently there are no tools that allow verifying compliance with the competencies declared in the professional and bachelor's degree programs offered by the Engineering College at the Universidad del Bío-Bío. In this project, a survey-type instrument is validated for the evaluation of acquired graduate competencies, defined in Engineering programs at Universidad del Bío-Bío. Here, validation was carried out considering students from Industrial and Electrical civil Engineering programs. Once the instrument validity was verified, it was applied to determine the level of fulfillment of the competencies acquired at the Bachelor of Science in Engineering level. Obtained results were analyzed to identify existing gaps in the curriculum with respect to the skills expected from graduates, thus detecting different degrees of progress achieved and opportunities for improvement. The findings of this study indicate that, both specific and generic competencies at the Bachelor of Science level are within acceptable ranges, since they achieved scores above 85%.