EVALUATION OF PROJECT-BASED LEARNING AT THE FACULTY OF ENGINEERING OF THE “CORPORACIÓN UNIVERSITARIA AMERICANA” Elkin Dario Aguirre Mesa, David Alberto Garcia Arango Faculty of Engineering, Corporación Universitaria Americana (COLOMBIA) Abstract In this paper are presented preliminary results obtained from the analysis of the Training Strategy for Projects at the Faculty of Engineering in the “Corporación Universitaria Americana “ in the years 2015- 2016. Using a mixed approach and considering a paradigmatic level Constructivist the results of evaluations of the projects integrators students of the faculty which consist of about 199 students in the first semester of 2015, 213 students in the second semester of 2015 and 237 students in the first semester of 2016 are considered. Through the contingency table data generated by testing and chi- square dependence, an index of 11.94 for the population studied is obtained, which allows us to conclude that the strategy has been strengthening considerably through the verification of the dependence between the ratings of the projects and the maturation level of the strategy, the factors intervening in this maturation level and future investigations in this regard are presented. Keywords: Learning, ABET, CDIO, Outcomes, Education. 1 INTRODUCTION Few years ago, the contents of professional careers were based on technical learning mediated by the competences and the instruments; it was considered competent the student who dominated knowledge and self-procedures from a specific knowledge area of performance. This was then, an education mediated by instruments. While technological advances were happening, and a bigger dominion of the information and emerging knowledge were needed, an encyclopaedic and scientific knowledge were required to generate a more solid conceptual structure. That could allow the generation of new knowledge in different environments; this led to a detriment of professional competences which was more focused on problems and exercises of a text rather than the daily life environmental problems. This need was observed and it was formulated a research question which referred to the implementation and effectiveness of a strategy proposed as a solution, observing the raising difficulty to integrate academic processes, and the learning of contents, with the professional practice and professional competences. In the following Project, this process is introduced and shows how it is generated the Project-based Formation Strategy (EFP) as a response, and the key items that made part of the conception, design, implementation and systematization in the Engineering Courses of the “Corporación Universitaria Americana”, taking as a cross-sectioned and moving concept the Integrating Projects. It will be started with a brief summary of the implementation of the strategy from its beginnings, subsequently, it will be analysed the constitutive elements of the Integrators Projects to be known: topics to choose, conceptualization axis, expected final product, research design, final reports and evaluative categories up to the levels of competence proposed by the ABET international authorized entity. Consequently, it is established the assessment of some of the projects, followed by the design of a rubric that took and developed the ABET proposed levels of knowledge, see ABET outcomes [1], and the level of preparation done by the students is registered in three levels: Amateur, Intermediate and Expert. Finally, analyses result using chi-squared and conclusions are established about the process, along with future research questions coming out of the success of this work. Proceedings of ICERI2016 Conference 14th-16th November 2016, Seville, Spain ISBN: 978-84-617-5895-1 5179