Transversal Competences of University Students of Engineering

One of the key changes of the European Higher Education Area is the implementation of a competence-based educational system. Students are now more than ever the axis around which the university system orbits. The competences that students should acquire during their studies include transversal competences, which are those competences related to leadership skills, problem solving, and teamwork, highly valued by labor market. This is particularly important in engineering, as these skills can influence the selection of one candidate over another. So, the evaluation and teaching of these kinds of competences are now some of the main challenges facing university professors as the corresponding learning objectives need to be set and assessed, both for study programs as well as for each individual subject, and this process is new for teachers. Focusing precisely on this aspect, our work, based on an empirical study conducted with a sample of 102 engineering students from the University Center of Merida, uses a tool to measure the progress of such students in different transversal competences. This tool not only allows us to evaluate the level of competence development, but also allows us to detect students’ areas of weakness in cross-curricular training that can then be addressed.