Abstract:

Peer-review is a methodology that allows the students to reflect on their actual level of knowledge in a topic and, thanks to the use of rubrics, identify those aspects whose mastering is key to successfully achieve the desired competencies. We have at our disposal several tools to implement this methodology, see for instance the activity "workshop" on moodle platform, but all of them relies on it is the student who uploads his/her work individually to the platform from his/her own computer.

However, in those subjects of the first years of the engineering curriculum whose evaluation is based mainly on the resolution of problems (and where aspects such as creativity are less present), it is convenient that the tasks to be evaluated are carried out in class in a supervised way, because otherwise we cannot guarantee that it is the student who has done the work individually at home. The aim of the presented project is to implement a peer-to-peer correction tool, ensuring that the student's work is done individually in class and leaving the peer-review process off-class, using, in each of the phases of the activity, the following set of computer applications: auto-multiple-choice opensource program, libreoffice Calc, google-forms applications, google mail and home-made shell scripts in a linux platform.

The results presented in this work correspond to a workshop offered to students who, having failed the ordinary exam of a subject of the degree in Civil and Territorial Engineering (U.P.M.), expressed their desire to submit to the extraordinary exam. During two weeks a two-hour daily workshop was held in which two examination exercises were worked every day. The evaluation of the activity was among the students themselves, in order to test the methodology developed in the project. The attendance was voluntary and did not affect the final grade, being able the students to attend those sessions they wanted.

The results show that the population of students who attended the workshop obtained better grades than those who did not attend, increasing both the average grade and the percentage of passes. The percentage of students that passed the exam in the population who attended the workshop is 21.1%, compared to 5.1% in the population who did not. If we compare the students who have improved their grade in the extraordinary exam with respect to their ordinary exam, we see that 57.1% of the population who attended the workshop has improved their grade, compared to 38.1% of the population who did not attend the workshop.

This methodology of support for students has proven to be a useful tool to facilitate the acquisition of competences associated with an engineering subject whose evaluation lies largely in the resolution of complex problems. However, the use of several computer tools means that the presented methodology is not easily applicable. Therefore, and as future work, it is proposed to implement all processes external to the Auto-Multiple-Choice program (spreadsheets, survey forms, emails) in the Google Aps Script environment and, in this way, be able to be offered to the university community.

Keywords:

Large groups of students, Skills assessment, Basic subjects in engineering and architecture.