Assessment of work organization and planning competences using the time entry form
A series of competences have been defined for the undergraduate degree in informatics engineering that any graduate should have acquired upon completion. The competences with a focus on scheduling include:
- Ability to work effectively as an individual, organizing and planning work individually or as a member of a team
- Ability to independently make the transition to the labour market, demonstrating a basic knowledge of the profession, an understanding of ethical and professional responsibility, and a drive for quality and continuous improvement.
To be able to train students to develop these competences, the university offers a specialized course on the Tune-Up platform. The course is "taught" in the Personal and Participatory Competences Classroom and is called "How to organize your time and make the most of your lectures".
To assess whether students taking this first course have achieved the required proficiency level in work organization and planning competences and continuous improvement, the Facultad de Informática's Quality Unit will analyse all the information that students are obliged to enter on the time entry form with the aim of assessing the following points:
- Schedule completeness. As a requirement for assessing whether students have achieved the required competence proficiency level, students must have filled in the time entry form for every week of the term.
- Student ability to subsequently modify their schedule after evaluating the deviations between their preliminary schedule and how the workload for each subject actually evolved. It is more important for students to know how to replan and, if necessary, spend more time on a subject than to conform to the preliminary schedule.
- Learning of the basic concepts used in the self-study material of the "How to plan your time and make the most of your lectures" course on the Tune-Up platform.
- Whether planning results in an improvement of student AI (Attainment Index) as students get further into their degree course, since the ultimate aim of training students to plan the time they spend on each subject is to enhance academic outcomes.
- Efficient use of time by students compared with the behaviour of their peers.
- Effort and time spent by students on all the course units.
To do this, students will use the on-line time entry form to submit a weekly report. Students should enter, for each subject and week, the total time scheduled for untutored activities (including scheduled activities in the categories of individual work, group work and others), as well as the time actually spent on each activity category listed on the form. Students will also enter the time spent on tutored and assessment activities.