Transversal competences and their fundamental role for a fulfilling life and success in a professional career have been paid greater attention and widely discussed in the context of Higher Education (HE) institutions and the world of work. The HE institutions have been called to respond to the societal and labour market demands, as both employers (Barbosa & Freire, 2019) and graduates (and their families) expect that universities will prepare them for the future of work and question the value of the educational path, its relevance and profitability considering the time and money costs involved (Wolff & Booth, 2017). Following the growing digitalisation of work, the emergence of new technologies, changes in the markets and organizations and new societal interaction patterns, graduates have been requested to have the necessary competences to adapt to a volatile job market, such as being open minded and cultural aware (OECD, 2018). It is now common agreement that technical competences are the basis for the access to the job market, but transversal competences are inevitably a differentiating element between qualified job applicants (Tomlinson, 2008).

In this context, the assessment of HE students’ transversal competences, especially in the case of those which enhance graduates’ employability, is critical. The most commonly used instruments consist of self-report surveys (Pažur Aničić et al., 2022), but some flaws are pointed out as participants tend to over- or underestimate their competences (Fahrenbach, 2022). The use of different assessment methods and instruments to prevent a biased assessment has, therefore, been suggested.

This study derives from a broader project where the Multiple Mini-Interviews (MMI), a method widely used in the Health field (Pau et al., 2013), was adapted to assess transversal competences of HE students from different scientific fields. The objective of this study is, in this context, to compare the analysis of the assessment of transversal competences using two methods, one based on the self-assessment (self-report survey) and the other based on an external evaluation (MMI), to verify whether there is a (mis)match between the two.

The concept of transversal competences refers to a set of skills, attitudes and knowledge, and the ability to apply these appropriately, depending on the context (Clarke, 2017). These competences are considered as necessary in different scientific areas and professional activities (European Commission, 2019) and are frequently organized into three main categories: cognitive, intrapersonal and interpersonal competences (National Research Council, 2012). The competences analysed in this study derive from the adaptation of this theoretical framework (Santos et al., 2020) resulting in the addition of a fourth category, contextual competences. Cognitive competences include: problem solving and generation of novelty; Intrapersonal competences encompass: open mindset, learning to learn and positive professional attitude; Interpersonal competences comprise teamwork, effective communication and leadership, and; at the Contextual level, market orientation is included.

Students’ self-assessment seems to be influenced by different individual and contextual dimensions such as their gender (Huang, 2013) and study field (Anderman & Young, 1994). Additionally, aspects such as students’ expectations and a social response bias can interfere with the accuracy of the self-ratings, translating into a recognised tendency for students to inflate their own competence assessment (Panadero et al., 2015).

Taking this trend into consideration, this study seeks to contribute to a comparative analysis of students' self-assessment and the external evaluation of their transversal competences, based on gender and study field, and to analyse if there is a match between the assessments with those methods and if it varies according to gender and fields of study.

This study was financially supported by national funds through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), within the scope of the project PTDC/CED-EDG/29726/2017 (S4F - Skills for the Future? The Value and Effectiveness of Competency-Based Higher Education), and the projects UIDB/00757/2020, UIDB/01661/2020 and UIDP/01661/2020. This study was approved by the Ethical Committees of the three universities involved in this project. In this study participated 130 HE students (73.8% female), aged between 21 and 47 years old (Mage = 23.63, SD = 3.95), from three Portuguese HE institutions, enrolling in the 1st (46.2%) and 2nd year (53.8%) of Master degree programmes that were similar among the universities. Students were enrolled in courses from different education and training areas. Self-assessment was performed through a Transversal competences Self-Report Survey, aimed at assessing students’ perceived level of the transversal competences on a scale ranging from 1 (highly incompetent) to 5 (highly competent), namely: Problem Solving, Generation of Novelty, Open Mindset, Learning to Learn, Positive Professional Attitude, Teamwork, Effective Communication, Leadership and Market Orientation. A description of each competence was provided to facilitate self-assessment, that was consistent with the competences’ descriptors used in the MMI. The MMI method was adapted for the assessment of HE students’ transversal competences (Santos et al., 2020) and it was implemented remotely, via Zoom platform. This method includes six stations, each designated to assess three of the nine competences assessed through the self-report survey. At each station, a scenario is presented that comprises problem solving situations, a presentation, interviews, and collaborative tasks, and one of them requires a trained standardised character. The MMI method is implemented in a timed circuit where students have 2 minutes to read the scenario and 8 minutes to answer or solve the task, except in one scenario (12 minutes). No specific scientific content knowledge or prior knowledge is necessary. Rubrics were organised for raters to evaluate students’ performance using a 10-point Likert scale: 1 (Very weak) – 10 (Excellent). Every student was evaluated by two trained raters, one in a synchronous format, and the other asynchronously. This method presents good reliability (α = .91), and a significant degree of inter-rater reliability assessment. Descriptive statistics were calculated to describe the self-assessment and external evaluation scores. A comparative analysis of the differences according to gender and study field was carried out to determine the existence of a (mis)match and the differences between scores in both exercises were computed.

The results suggest that students of both genders consider themselves to be more proficient in the competence Adaptability and less proficient in Generation of Novelty and Leadership. Students involved in Arts courses have a significantly higher self-assessment of the Generation of Novelty competence than students from other subject areas. In the external assessment, regardless of the students’ gender, the highest results were found in the assessment of the competences Learning to Learn and Positive Professional Attitude and the lowest results concerned the assessment of Problem Solving, Generation of Novelty and Adaptability. Students from Social and Behavioural Sciences-Management and Economics obtained the highest scores in the competences Learning to Learn, Positive Professional Attitude, and Market Orientation. Additionally, the highest scores in Problem Solving, Generation of Novelty, and Adaptability were obtained by Social and Behavioural Sciences-Psychology students. Finally, the highest scores in Effective Communication, Teamwork, and Leadership were obtained by Engineering and Manufacturing students. The comparative analysis of the assessment of competences showed that Effective Communication is the only competence where there is a correspondence between self-assessment and external evaluation. There was also a trend towards overestimation of the Open Mindset competence and underestimation of the Learning to Learn and Leadership competences. It is expected, with this study, to contribute to a deeper understanding of the methodologies for the assessment of transversal competences and to provide some reflections on how students with different characteristics and from different fields of study perceive their proficiency in several transversal competences and which competences emerge as more or less fostered in the different fields of study. This is particularly relevant for HE institutions seeking to enhance their graduates' transversal competences during the academic training, and, ultimately, to improve their career prospects and employability.

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