Un estudio de competencias transversales en la Universidad de Murcia

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand the development, domain and relevance of transversal competencies (TC) in the undergraduate degree programs at the University of Murcia after the implementation and consolidation of the EHEA. The value of these competencies increase in a versatile and unstable social-labour context and different studies indicate that a high percentage of undergraduates are not trained in those types of basic, transferable and multipurpose competencies. This is reason enough to begin this research and to know in depth how the University of Murcia is working through the challenge of transversal competencies in university classrooms. The research is of a non-experimental, descriptive and cross-sectional design involving 1,137 undergraduate students at the University of Murcia in different undergraduate degree programs which are distributed in the five areas of knowledge (social sciences, health sciences, experimental sciences, arts and humanities and technical teaching). The evaluation of these students was collected through an ad hoc questionnaire called CECTGRA. This instrument includes five blocks of questions in relation to the development or level of teaching transversal competencies in the university classrooms, the domain or acquisition that the student presents and the relevance that it gives him for his professional development. The psychometric properties of the questionnaire are analysed with different procedures. Evidence of content validity is obtained through expert judgment procedure and the individual aggregates method. The evidence of its internal consistency are obtained using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) based on structural equation models and the AMOS program. Finally, the reliability of the questionnaire with Cronbach alpha was analysed. In all cases, acceptable results of the model fit and internal satisfactory consistency of the questionnaire were achieved. For the rest of the information of the analysis, descriptive and inferential statistics are used through the SPSS v21 program and Atlas.ti. Among the most significant results, there is a sufficient improvement of the transversal competencies in the classrooms. Additionally, there was a close relationship with the use of active methodologies and curricular practices which were selected as the most appropriate for development from the students’ perspective. In regards to domain, this trend continues but with a slightly higher level than development in all cases and a predisposition to increase in those students who spend more time studying and alternating his classes with work or with international or research experiences. Likewise, there is a high relevance of these competencies in professional development, especially to facilitate the process of entering the job market and to adapt to new professional situations. From the contrast between variables we can see a positive trend towards the adaptation and balance of competency in university education for the professional requirements of future graduates given that the most relevant competencies are also the most dominated and these, in turn, are the most developed at the University of Murcia. The students consider strengthening the training of transversal competencies as one of the proposals for improvement to bring the job market closer to the educational and training systems. This answer is complemented by the student's vision of the strengths and weaknesses of this training during his undergraduate degree along with its improvement at an institutional, faculty and classroom level. The interpretation of these results concludes by pointing out the essential work of the academic leaders in the rethinking of the processes linked to the transversal competencies during one’s undergraduate degree, establishing improvements that favour their curricular and acquisition fusion by the student and that, as a consequence, positively affects the improvement of the university system itself and productivity in its entirety. This research closes with a proposal of open and flexible action to possible extension and remodelling of the development of transversal competencies in order to introduce improvements that transcend favourably in the evolution of undergraduate degrees and the university.