Abstract:

The steps taken to reduce the effects of the COVID-19 concern the entire demand of the society, particularly the higher education, which faced the challenge of maintaining the educative system in a change of paradigm due to the impossibility of the usual face-to-face education. In front of that, the continuous assessment system seems to acquire more relevance than ever, due to the characteristics of the current system of teaching (dual or online). That is why we propose to analyse the characteristics of a group of physics of the first year of Electronic Engineering in the Miguel Hernández University, Spain. For this group, continuous assessment has been used during the last three years. During an extraordinary period like this one, characterized by the covid-19, some aspects of traditional education need to be checked. In this way, we propose the use of several operators to aggregate the tests carried out along the year to obtain the final assessment using traditional methods like ordered weighted average (OWA) and its extensions. This novelty tries to generalize the results obtained by traditional methods adapting its results to the particular necessity of each moment. The used aggregators were the mean, weighted average, OWA, Ascending OWA, Induced OWA, and ascending induced OWA. To check its pertinence, the students were asked about its characteristics. The analysis ANOVA was used to check the influence of these characteristics on the final assessment (using any of the six operators proposed), and the relation between the number of hours that each student has declared to use to prepare the subject and the final results were analysed. Results showed the characteristics the most related to the final assessment. The use of Ascending Induced OWA increased the relation between some characteristics and the final assessment and this relation was kept in a similar way for the others. In the same way, different measures to obtain the final assessment could alter substantially the final results of a continuous learning, the mean and the weighted average show similar results, and the use of induced variables such as the sum of the marks obtained for all the students increased that relation. Other induced variables such as the total number of hours dedicated to the subject, or the importance of each lesson according to the influence in the study plan can be used. In this particular work, mean and weighted average show similar results, whereas the use of the induced variables such as the total marks (by all of the students of the group) of each test increased the final assessment. Lastly, it was checked a slight relation between the hours devoted to the study by the students and the final marks. This could be done to a poor way to register this aspect or to the different way of the student to adapt to the subject, considering that it was his first year at the university. Finally, we must continue analysing the student response to the continuous assessment system in semipresential or online teaching to guarantee the quality of higher education in the pandemic COVID-19 times.

Keywords:

COVID-19, Ordered Weighted Average, higher education, semipresential, continuous assessmen.