Educational Initiatives to Develop Transversal Skills in the Management Subject of Master's Degree in Industrial Engineering at Universitat Politécnica De Valéncia

Abstract

This work presents an improvement of the structure and methodology of a subject entitled Management, belonging to the Master's Degree in Industrial Engineering (ETSII) at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). The presented subject deals with the basic and fundamental aspects that the student will need in order to correctly perform the functions of business management in changing and competitive markets and environments and contributes to the formation of professionals capable of carrying out management, direction and evaluation tasks in productive organizations. From the subject, the students' management skills are strengthened to elaborate and build strategic alternatives of decision, both in relation to the understanding of the problems, as well as in the decision making and in the evaluation of the consequences that the own actions can have for the company and for the people. It is centered on the improvement of professional skills. In this context, UPV transversal competences (TC), aim to synthesize a competence profile acquired by all UPV graduates. This study comes from an Institutional Educational Innovation and Improvement Projects to develop a methodological coordination through webs of support in ETSII CT (PIME/19-20/151). The main goal of this project was to make easier our students to acquire the more complex CTs-UPV with an effective model that does not place an additional burden on instructors, providing students with e-learning resources such as support for their training. This study is focused in CT04.-Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship. Innovation is shown as a key competence for companies to remain competitive in the market. Innovation is based on creativity, knowledge and organization, understood as a way of working to achieve objectives. A new trend in higher education is the current shift towards improving innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship of students. To work on these skills, students of Management have to do different exercises in groups where there are 4 to 6 randomly selected students with different roles. Each working group will start by creating a company, on which the different tools and methodologies will be developed through practical cases to achieve innovative and creative solutions that add value to the main stakeholders. The achievement of the proposed techniques for developing Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship competency has been revealed as a significant aspect for the students, and the web CTs-UPV designed on the project (https://ctetsii.blogs.upv.es) has been considered as a strong support for their achievement.