New Rules for assessing Mathematical Competencies Erasmus Project

Project Title

New Rules for assessing Mathematical Competencies

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Pedagogy and didactics; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

Teaching mathematics in engineering requires a change in teaching methodology. The way of teaching and learning mathematics must be adapted to the context of the students, since for an engineer mathematics is a tool to solve problems, it is not an end in itself. This idea is the one that has been developed during this project, adapting the assessment of mathematics and considering a comenticies-based assessment instead of content-based one.
Starting from the document developed by the Mathematics working group (MWG) of the European Association for Engineering Education (SEFI), “A framework for Mathematics Curricula in Engineering Education” (Alpers et al., 2013), we elaborated a work plan. This document includes the learning outcomes (LO) of the different levels of mathematics for engineering, specifically, in the RULES_MATH project we focused on Core Level 1; that is, the mathematics that a first-year engineering student needs. These LO are detailed for Analysis and Calculus, Linear Algebra, Geometry, Discrete Mathematics, and Statistics and Probability. For each of these courses we have developed the evaluation system, some user guides, corresponding to the standards that we defined during the project, as well as the necessary training so that a teacher outside the project can use them.
In order to define the assessment standards, we began by presenting a report on the current situation of the teaching of mathematics in engineering in our universities, later, to reach an agreement on the competency-based assessment system, we analyzed what we had in our respective countries, related with assessment of competencies, at other educational levels, mainly in secondary education. In the final stage we defined the mathematical competencies-based assessment system for engineering.

The objectives of the project can be summarized as follows:
1.- Develop a collaborative, comprehensive and accessible assessment model based on competencies for mathematics in the context of engineering.
2.- Prepare and compile the resources and materials necessary to design assessment activities based on competencies.
3.- Disseminate the model to European higher education institutions through social networks and promote the dissemination of the project throughout Europe.

The project participants have been mathematics teachers and students of engineering degrees. This project has directly reached a minimum of 1000 students in partner universities and its results are available on the project website.

The activities that have been carried out during the life of the project have been:
(1) Project management.
(2) Quality assurance: once the quality manual was approved by all the partners, which included the work procedures and templates that were used, the partners prepare all the material taking into account the quality and style standards.
Another task carried out by the quality team was the definition of indicators. These indicators have been detailed in Section 9 of this report.
(3) Establishment of the assessment rules or standards: As mentioned in the intellectual output IO2, the assessment rules for mathematical competencies agreed by consensus among the partners have been proposed.
(4) Development of training courses: also mentioned in the corresponding section of the output IO3 .
(5) Dissemination of project results: the project has been disseminated among teachers who teach mathematics to engineering and science in general. The usual dissemination in university education has been in conferences, seminars and workshops in which professors from inside and outside the consortium participated.

The benefits of the project are not short-term. The first benefit is to have the necessary materials to assess math competencies. As this material continues to be disseminated and used, the students results will be improved and they will be better prepared for their professional future.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 388670 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• ANKARA HACI BAYRAM VELI UNIVERSITESI
• INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DE COIMBRA
• AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DEINVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
• UNIVERSITATEA TEHNICA DE CONSTRUCTII BUCURESTI
• PLOVDIVSKI UNIVERSITET PAISIY HILENDARSKI
• SLOVENSKA TECHNICKA UNIVERZITA V BRATISLAVE
• CESKE VYSOKE UCENI TECHNICKE V PRAZE