Developing and Assessing Engineering Competencies at Experiential Learning Spaces

This Innovative Practice Work in Progress Paper presents a contemporary proposal for engineering competencies assessment research in higher education practice, geared to pedagogy scholars, engineering faculty, recruiters and accreditation institutions, among others. This research work builds a breakthrough practice to assess disciplinary competencies within the context of a Challenge-Based Learning and Experiential Learning, in which students learn through getting involve and taking action in real manufacturing problems, creating and implementing sustainable solutions for Engineering concerns. The study presents a state of art review of Competency-based Education; then the competencies assessment methodology proposal and their experimentation approach is described by means of a specific case of study in an experiential and challenged based learning, for exemplification. Finally, implications, future work and conclusions are offered in relation to the main contributions of this work. The main intention for the methodology presented in this work is to deliver value-added feedback to students to help them in their future engineering practice as professionals and the individual blossoming of their behaviors', attitudes and values, extending with this approach the practices described in this paper to pedagogical research and educational practice from others practitioners. ©IEEE, The authors.