Making Explicit and Reinforcing Horizontal Competences in an Electronic Engineering Degree

In the European higher education landscape, Dublin descriptors indicate that qualifications are awarded to students who have demonstrated knowledge and understanding in a field and can apply it in a “professional” way. In this context, “professionalism” must be interpreted as getting along in a working scenario context and this implies to manage some horizontal or generic skills. The subjects taking part of the program of a given degree focus on achieving knowledge in a given discipline. The day-to-day work in each subject is fundamentally oriented to get such knowledge, but, simultaneously, diverse horizontal competences or skills are implicitly acquired on the way. Graduate programs have to organize the activities building evidence of the achievement in acquiring such skills and competences. This adds value to the education process and helps to highlight the academic qualification. The implication is organizing the educational activity that allows developing competent persons. In this paper, we describe the horizontal competences in the Electronic Engineering degree, at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), and we deal with an analysis of the current situation and the development of a working-plan. The aim is to make explicit the work on horizontal skills that is already done in an implicit way and to propose actions to better coordinate and fill the gaps in the process. A simple and illustrative example to make explicit this work by means of a typical activity is provided.