Authors
Joelyn de Lima, Teaching Support Centre, Vice-Presidency for Education, EPFL, Switzerland; Siara Isaac, Teaching Support Centre, Vice-Presidency for Education, EPFL, Switzerland; Oxana Sachenkova, IoT Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Media Technology, Linneaus University, Sweden; Rucha Joshi, Plaksha University, India; Erna Engelbrecht, Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Synopsis
This chapter presents practical guidelines for educators to evaluate educational interventions designed to develop engineering students’ transferable competencies and skills. The guidelines can be used when implementing new initiatives at the module or programme level, as well as documenting impact for your promotion dossier. Evaluation should be seen as an integral part of improving teaching and learning because documenting effective educational practices enables them to be appreciated and shared, and to identify points for improvement that fall short of your desired teaching goals. We provide a semi-sequential eight-step guide for articulating evaluation goals, identifying the intervention and skills to be evaluated, selecting methodologies and evaluation tools, and finally acting on the results of the evaluation. Additionally, this chapter offers criteria for assessing the quality of the evaluation itself to ensure the validity, reliability, and credibility of findings. Overall, the chapter will introduce you to tools to design evaluations to inform pedagogical decision making and strengthen the impact of interventions that develop transferable competencies and skills.
Author Biographies
Joelyn de Lima, Teaching Support Centre, Vice-Presidency for Education, EPFL, Switzerland
de Lima, Joelyn (0000-0001-9235-9704) is a Pedagogical Advisor at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, and author of the book Teaching Transversal Skills for Engineering Students. Trained in the biological sciences, her current research and practice are focused on enhancing the higher educational experience for students.
Siara Isaac, Teaching Support Centre, Vice-Presidency for Education, EPFL, Switzerland
Isaac, Siara (0000-0002-1527-8510) is based at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she teaches transferable skills, designs evaluations, and investigates learning. Her recent work includes Facilitating Experiential Learning in Higher Education (Routledge, 2022) and Teaching Transversal Skills for Engineering Students (EPFL Press, 2024).
Oxana Sachenkova, IoT Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Media Technology, Linneaus University, Sweden
Sachenkova, Oxana (0000-0002-3238-6011) is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Linnaeus University (LNU), Sweden, where she is actively involved in teaching engineering and web development students. Oxana is a facilitator of the 3T-PLAY method and is currently working on adapting it for software engineering and distance learning contexts.
Rucha Joshi, Plaksha University, India
Joshi, Rucha (0000-0002-0456-233X) is an Associate Professor at Plaksha University, India, and specialises in biomedical engineering and education research. A Vanderbilt MS graduate and Purdue PhD, she has authored two books, holds three patents, and integrates experiential and pedagogical innovations, advancing research on biomaterials and women’s leadership in Indian education.
Erna Engelbrecht, Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Engelbrecht, Erna (0000-0001-8731-347X) is pursuing a PhD in Engineering Education at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, where she is also a Learning Developer participating in diverse projects related to improving education. Her current research focuses on developing a framework for evaluating educational innovations.
Published
August 26, 2026
Copyright (c) 2026 Gillian Saunders-Smits, Lynn Van den Broeck, Thies Johannsen
How to Cite
de Lima, J., Isaac, S., Sachenkova, O., Joshi, R., & Engelbrecht, E. (2026). Evaluating Interventions That Develop Transferable Competencies and Skills . In
SEFI Handbook on Teaching Transferable Competencies and Skills in Engineering (pp. 863-880). TU Delft OPEN Books.
https://doi.org/10.59490/mt.266.97
