ANALYSIS AND EVOLUTION OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT COMPETENCES USING AN ICT APPLICATION. THE CASE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GIRONA

摘要

Due to the importance of competences in the European higher education area and the objective to adapt competences to the Bologna Declaration, our department decided to test and evaluate the competences of students with the aim of knowing more on competences' actual situation. This analysis is necessary in order to design a competence-based university. This article reflects the analysis of the evolution of competences in project management using an application called Cycloid. Participant students course different careers (industrial engineering, industrial design, etc.) and different course levels (first, second, third years of studies) at the Polytechnic School of the University of Girona, Spain. The proposed competence evaluation tool is called Cycloid, an ICT (information and communication technology) based application helpful in the process of evaluating thirty concrete competences both personal and social that can be further aggregated into six main groups. This model identifies a generic work role, namely project manager, a person ready to plan, organize, manage, and evaluate complex works or projects that need frequent and solid interaction with other people in order to complete the entire project. In these circumstances students are adequate to evaluate personal projects. In general terms, their studies like a project. The objective of such analysis is to improve the quality of education by using knowledge created through the competence self-evaluation. Our aim is to obtain results that show which is the current situation and the evolution of the competences trough time and trough the different courses of the same career. Students obtain a graduation and achieve a level of knowledge when demonstrating implicit knowledge upon subjects in their studies. Nowadays, students should also demonstrate explicit knowledge in competences. This self-evaluation discovers in which competences students feel strong. This information is useful when designing competence based training and target training methods. It also provides high value information for both teachers and universities in terms of individual and group competences.