Learning Outcomes in New Degrees

Abstract

This study proposes a model to define learning outcomes related to competences required for the new degrees. This proposal represents an attempt to facilitate planning and coordinating teaching and learning by competences. Implementing this model has allowed to identify several elements involved in the definition of the competences and their assessment, to make explicit learning outcomes by linking performance indicators with the tasks and the assessment process, to provide teachers with a framework and with tools to facilitate their task of assessing competences, and finally to develop it over a coordinated teaching team, making it easy to select: competences and their associated learning outcomes, the most suitable methodology and teaching tasks, as well as the instruments and techniques that enable assessing the level of development of these competences. Attention is also drawn to the usefulness of portfolio and rubrics; the former as an element that facilitates monitoring the student’s learning process—taking into account its reflective and integrative nature—and the rubric for being considered as the appropriate procedure to reflect the assessment criteria—as a result of their ability to clarify what is expected of a student’s work and to assess their performance. Finally, we review two of the competences included in a nursing degree and define the learning outcomes with two examples: generic competences and subject-area related competences. These examples describe the elements composing the model, as well as their interrelationships, which contributes to assess work correctly.