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Article
Assessing Vocational Competencies in Civil Engineering: Lessons from AHELO for Future Practice
Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training (2015)
  • Jacob Pearce, ACER
Abstract

There has been much interest in the notion of vocational competencies of late. The pressing question, however, is how to measure vocational competencies. In order to contribute to this ‘how’, the results of the Civil Engineering strand of the recent Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) Feasibility Study are discussed. The focus of the assessment instrument was explicitly on “above content” areas of the domain, and the assessment framework provides an example of a construct which articulates certain domain-specific competence components. This paper draws specific attention the Constructed Response Tasks (CRTs) in the instrument and discusses the results of the study with a focus on the lessons to be learnt from AHELO for future practice.

Keywords
  • Higher education,
  • Vocational education,
  • Civil engineering,
  • AHELO,
  • Assessment,
  • Training,
  • Competence,
  • Measurement
Publication Date
February, 2015
Citation Information
Jacob Pearce. "Assessing Vocational Competencies in Civil Engineering: Lessons from AHELO for Future Practice" Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training Vol. 7 Iss. 1 (2015)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jacob_pearce/46/