Strategy for the evaluation and monitoring of competencies in engineering programs to improve students’ learning and quality of education

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) framework propose the concept of competencies as a key cognitive, attitudinal, and procedural aspect aimed at the integral development of students, which implies a challenge in the way of evaluating them. Thus, the traditional monitoring of students’ progress through their grades is not enough, and monitoring competency is becoming more important. This research proposes a system for monitoring competencies in engineering programs. The system identifies the expected learning outcomes (LOs) of each course and cross-references them according to the ponderation of each evaluation planned. Subsequently, it links each LO with the competencies of the course, allowing the student to be monitored throughout their career. The strategy was applied to a civil engineering course. The students’ results, according to the course competencies, were obtained, linking them correctly with the LO and the grades obtained. The evolution of these competencies was evaluated until the end of the semester in which the students were taking the course. The analysis of the results shows the differences between the monitoring by grades versus by competencies, evidencing that there were cases in which a student passed the course by grades but failed to develop the expected competency.