Undergraduate Business Student’s Self-Assessment of Meta-Competencies in the Context of the Final Year Projects

While research on competence-based assessment has grown, scholars have conducted fewer studies on an integrative view of competence acquisition, in the context of the final year project, that have particularly addressed the meta-competence approach. This paper examines undergraduate business students’ perceived acquisition of competencies during the development of their final year project and tries to determine relevant differences among the set of competencies students’ value most. The study gathered quantitative data by using a questionnaire applied to students after their presentation of the final degree project at a Spanish Business School. The findings show the emergence of three profiles of students based on their competencies acquisition. The profiles display an interconnected relation and put forward some shortfalls in competence acquisition as well as propose an emerging profile of the meta-competent student.

Some students plagiarism tricks, and tips for effective check

One of the main goals of assignments in the academic environment is to assess the students’ knowledge and mastery of a specific topic, and it is crucial to ensure that the work is original and has been solely made by the students to assess their competence acquisition. Therefore, Text-Matching Software Products (TMSPs) are used by academic institutes to ensure academic integrity and address plagiarism. However, some students find ways to trick TMSPS. In this paper, files with the common tricks students do to beat TMSPS have been created and investigates with nine academic level TMPS to evaluate their effectiveness against these tricks, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each TMSP, and providing instructors with some practical tips on checking plagiarism effectively and spotting any tricks to cheat without getting noticed.

Una experiencia de aprendizaje servicio interciclo: Relaciones interorganizacionales y orientación de carrera

This service learning collaboration combines community service with academic learning. With that purpose, a collaboration network was created between the University of Valencia and Escola Gavina, a preschool, primary and secondary school. The objective was twofold, first, it attempts to give postgraduate students the opportunity to carry out a diagnostic of the inter-organizational relations of Escola Gavina. This objective is pursued through collaboration between different entities, which is one of the basis of service learning. Inter-organizational relationships are crucial in today’s society, they are becoming more frequent, and allow some organizations to achieve objectives that would not otherwise be possible. Second, it allows to provide academic and professional orientation to students of secondary school, while stimulating the development of linguistic competences, autonomy, and social interaction. Twenty students from the master's degree and twenty-seven from secondary school participated in the study. The learning process, their self-perceived competence acquisition, and their degree of satisfaction were assessed. In general, the results showed that this collaboration between students from different educational cicles achieved the intendeed objectives.

DIGITAL ENGINEERING: COMPETENCE ACQUISITION AND PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT AS AN OPEN CO-CREATION PROCESS

Dealing with the increasingly complex interrelationships in companies, technologies and markets requires engineers to have a holistic, systemic understanding of digital change. Future engineers need future skills and must be able to react to ever faster changing technical requirements by independently expanding their knowledge, developing (technology-based) solution strategies as well as designing, evaluating and communicating these with regard to social, ecological and cultural aspects and requirements. In order to integrate these future skills into existing curricula, study programs must be designed in such a way that they are permeable to continuous and agile adaptation in relation to new knowledge and new technologies. This process can only succeed if universities see themselves as open learning systems that promote co-creation processes among all university stakeholders. The Faculty of Process Engineering, Energy and Mechanical Systems at TH Köln/University of Applied Sciences has recently recognized the resulting need for a transformation process in program development and has further developed the consecutive master's program "Mechanical Engineering/Smart Systems", in which agile learning environments and innovation spaces are created. However, the redesign and further development of modules is not enough. A holistic, systemic understanding in dealing with transformative technologies requires a cultural change in which lecturers and students shape the digital transformation on an equal footing. In a joint learning and research process, they iteratively and agilely test which competencies best prepare students for an increasingly digitalized workplace and which analog and virtual learning spaces this requires. As part of the project "Digital Engineering - Competence Acquisition for Mechanical Engineers in the Digital Age", the faculty is currently implementing the Technology Area, a measure whose aim is to accompany these digital transformation processes at the faculty and to provide lecturers and students with the necessary freedom to experiment with new technologies in teaching. Here, subject-specific teaching and research concepts for the use of new technologies are to be developed and tested together in a co-creation process. The first concepts developed in the Technology Area as well as other Best Practices from the faculty will be presented in the paper. These include the Mixed-Reality-Game FutureING, the Serious Game Worlds of Materials and the development of a StudiCoachBot. In order to promote co-creation processes within and outside the university, a Digitalization Conference was held in May as part of the project to present innovative and forward-looking innovations in engineering education. The reflection of all of the presented initiatives is structurally anchored and professionalized by the House of Excellence in Engineering Education.

High-Fidelity Virtual Objective Structured Clinical Examinations with Standardized Patients in Nursing Students: An Innovative Proposal during the COVID-19 Pandemic

In response to the cancellation of in-person objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) prompted by confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we designed a solution to adapt our traditional OSCEs to this new reality in nursing education. We implemented an innovative teaching proposal based on high-fidelity virtual OSCEs with standardized patients. The purposes of our study were to describe this innovative teaching proposal and compare nursing competence acquisition in final year nursing students through virtual and in-person OSCE modalities. The study included 234 undergraduate students: 123 students were assessed through high-fidelity virtual OSCEs during May 2020, whereas 111 students were assessed through in-person OSCEs during May 2019. The structure of OSCEs, including its stations, clinical simulated scenarios, and checklists, was the same in both OSCE modalities. The effect size of the differences among the competence categories of checklists, including their total scores, was small. Regarding our virtual OSCEs was similarly successful to in-person OSCEs, this online format was found to be useful, feasible, and cost-saving when in-person OSCE was not possible. Therefore, high-fidelity virtual OSCEs with standardized patients could be considered as another choice of OSCE not only in the current COVID-19 pandemic but could also be extended to normal situations, even post-pandemic.

Role of Lipid Metabolism and Signaling in Mammalian Oocyte Maturation, Quality, and Acquisition of Competence

It has been found that the quality of oocytes from obese women has been compromised and subsequent embryos displayed arrested development. The compromised quality may be either due to the poor or rich metabolic conditions such as imbalance or excession of lipids during oocyte development. Generally, lipids are mainly stored in the form of lipid droplets and are an important source of energy metabolism. Similarly, lipids are also essential signaling molecules involved in various biological cascades of oocyte maturation, growth and oocyte competence acquisition. To understand the role of lipids in controlling the oocyte development, we have comprehensively and concisely reviewed the literature and described the role of lipid metabolism in oocyte quality and maturation. Moreover, we have also presented a simplified model of fatty acid metabolism along with its implication on determining the oocyte quality and cryopreservation for fertilization.