Abstract:

The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and formative self-assessment are typical practices that have been encouraged by the European Higher Education Area and the UNESCO to expand access to learning and to improve quality in the learning process.

According to the Glossary of Educational Reform (Great Schools Partnership: http://edglossary.org/formative-assessment/), formative assessments is based on the collection of detailed information that can be used to improve instruction and student learning while this learning is happening, while summative assessment is used to evaluate learning at the conclusion of a specific instructional period. Thus, in this work we have used online self-assessment as a formative assessment tool with the objective of improving students learning process to prepare the final exam of laboratory practices (summative assessment).

The main objective of the Chemistry laboratory practices in Agronomy Engineering is to show experimentally some of the theoretical contents. Nevertheless, one of the main problems we face when teaching Chemistry to 1st course students of Agronomy Engineering degree is that some of them have not ever been in a Chemistry laboratory before and, therefore, they find it very difficult to pass their laboratory practices exam (summative assessment) without any extra-support.

In this work, we applied online formative self-assessment with the objective to offer an extra-support to the students to reach the sufficient level need to pass the laboratory practices exam. With this goal in mind, we have used the blackboard learn tool to design a five-questions test available online after each laboratory session. The premise to build each question was “teach while assessing”, trying to teach while the student is reading the question so that the student can use this acquired knowledge when answering the question. The online formative self- assessments were offered to the students only during the second four-month period as a voluntary class assignment.

At the end of the school year, we evaluated the influence of formative assessment on the summative assessment, comparing the existence of improvement in the final laboratory practices exam results. The 80% of the students who realized self-assessment during the second four-month period, improved their result in the final exam of laboratory practices in relation to those obtained at the end of the first four-month period. Conversely, only the 50% of the students that did not perform self-assessment were able to improve their results in the same situation. These and other evidences of this case study, show important indications that by using online formative self-assessment designed with the premise of “teach while assessing”, students can improve the understanding of the Chemistry laboratory practices.

Keywords:

Formative assessment, Summative assessment, ICT, Chemistry, Agronomy Engineering.