HEAd'15 - International Conference on Higher Education Advances - Proceedings

Abstract

PrefaceThis volume contains the proceedings of the First International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'15), which was held in Valencia, Spain during 24-26 June 2015. HEAd aims to become a forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experiences, opinions and research results relating to the preparation of students and the organization of educational systems. The conference was hosted by the Faculty of Business Administration and Management of the Universitat Politècncia de València.The conference featured three invited speakers who overviewed important and actual topics: John Kalu Osiri (Washington State University) delivered the presentation on the indispensable role of educators in shaping a nation, Ana Muñoz-Miquel (Universitat Jaume I) on how to bridge the gap between professional practice and university education, and José V. Benlloch-Dualde (Universitat Politècnica de València) on effective ways to enhance collaboration in the classroom.Following the call for papers, HEAd'15 received 165 submissions with authors representing 41 different countries. Papers went through a rigorous review process. Each paper was reviewed by at least two program committee members. Finally, 50 submissions were selected as full papers (representing an acceptance rate of 30%) and 22 submissions were selected as short papers. Additionally, 20 papers were selected to be presented as posters.I would like to thank all the people and institutions who contributed to the success of the HEAd'15 conference: the authors, the members of the program committee as well as the additional reviewers, the invited speakers, the members of the organizing committee, and the sponsors. I am also grateful to Abstract: The international accreditation for the Master and Bachelor degrees offered at our university, together with the demands of the employers, have made it clear that the students' curricula should specify not only what they have studied, but also what they are actually able to do. Although the competence based curricula approach has been used in the development of the new programmes for the Master and Bachelor degrees within the European Higher Education Area in recent years, the assessment of these competences is still a pending task. This work presents an 'outcomes' approach for the assessment of the oral and written communication skills within subjects related to mechanical and materials engineering. In particular, this paper proposes some rubrics developed in order to quantify the level of achievement. These rubrics are based on the evaluation of some learning outcomes that can be observed by using different strategies during the course. Conclusions about preliminary results and the difficulties found in order to create these tools are also described here.