New Perspectives in Science Education

The new context of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), aims to train students not only in specific competencies that will enable them to acquire knowledge, but also on general competencies that allow them to deal with the different situations they will face in their future professional. Besides the importance of quality teaching in the teaching-learning process of the students, there are numerous factors that have a decisive influence in the process, with the assessment, defined as the average of relationship between the objectives and the results obtained, one of the most important factors, which in turn depends not only on the method used, but the human factor, i.e. the student's perception of the subject and their motivation.

The benefits of continuous assessment are reflected in student learning and it is important to determine what factors influence this process, in order to continuously improve. These factors do not remain constant, but change among other factors based on studies conducted and of the academic year in which the student is, it does give us valuable information. Moreover, the gradual incorporation of women into the EHEA, both as a teacher and student, has been an added value, and in many cases women who achieve better academic results.

Starting from these premises, the objective of this work is to study the factors involved the teaching-learning process from the point of view of the evaluation of technical subjects of the Degree in Building at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, in order to obtain influence of these factors in the teaching-learning process in terms of the course and student sex. To do this, data were taken, analyzed and compared results of two complementary subjects and pertaining to the area of knowledge "Continuum Mechanics and Structural Analysis," of second-year and fourth year respectively, "Resistance of materials and elasticity” and " Concrete as a structural”, both with 6 ECTs credits.

The results show how the intrinsic capacity of students and their perception of the subjects are determining factors in their motivation, and therefore the acquisition of competencies that must be reached. The influence of the student's ability in the results achieved is more evident in the second year, for similar grades in both sexes. In the course of the fourth grade, this effect is not so important; however the percentage of women passed exceeds that of men. The perception by students of both subjects, both in its development and the type of evaluation has been very positive in both cases, relating almost linearly, the perception of the subject with the grades obtained.