Competencies and higher education: evidences and returns. The TECO project

The aim of this work is to present the state of progress and the main features of the TECO (TEst of COmpetence) project, promoted by the (Italian) National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes with the aim to assess students' learning outcomes in the higher education contest. The results of the 2017-2018 TECO survey (which involved voluntarily over 12,500 nursing, physiotherapy and medical radiology students), showed that attending a university programme makes a difference in development of some competencies, especially for the disciplinary sphere. The analysis will focus on the connections between the characteristics of the students at the beginning of their study career and the achieved level of tested competences. The return of the test results to the students and study programmes' coordinators will be presented and discussed, considering their possible uses in a self-assessment perspective. TECO results and the new indicators that will be originated from this project could prove to be reliable tools for university programmes self-assessment, encouraging the use of evidence-based strategies for higher education improvement.