Abstract:

Teaching activities in engineering disciplines face important and always changing challenges for training future professionals. Society demands engineers and technicians with transversal competences and able to communicate properly in an increasingly global and communicative market. Traditionally, the evaluation methods are based on a final exam, which totally or partially provides a final mark on the subject. With exam-based assessments, which are often unfair and ineffective, students do not focus on acquiring the necessary background and competencies but only on passing the final exam. In addition, a unique test does not guarantee the efficient acquisition of the required skills. For this reason, during last years there has been an increasing tendency to evaluate the students of technical subjects based on oral presentations of their work. Although the benefits for the students are undeniable, a key factor in the learning process concerns the assessment methods to evaluate student's learning, which should be adapted to these new methodologies. In undergraduate degrees (and even at master level), the high number of enrolled students (up to 100-150 students per subject) complicates the task of providing an objective and complete evaluation, so there are still unresolved challenges. The latter tends to be solved by forming workgroups.

This paper proposes an objective evaluation methodology based on:
(1) the oral presentation of each workgroup, and
(2) the evaluation by academic staff throughout a rubric method.

The rubric model was elaborated by the staff of the subject and contains qualitative criteria, such as organization of the presentation; and quantitative criteria, such as applications of concepts. Each member of the group has to partially present the work done and the academic staff have to complete the rubric model for the whole group during and after the presentations. The methodology was tested in the subjects ‘Integrated Management of Ports and Coasts’ of the Bachelor's Degree Program and 'Dynamics of the Environment, Atmosphere, Ocean and Coast' of the Master Program, in the field of Civil Engineering, at the University of Granada over the academic year 2016-2017.

Preliminary results from a questionnaire indicate that the rubric evaluation was adequately accepted by the students and was especially useful during the review of the final grade by the students, during which very few changes were made. However, limitations have been detected in this proposed method, such as:
(1) the use of the same rubric model for the whole group hinders the individual evaluation each student, and
(2) complete the rubric at the same time as the students are presenting makes difficult to pay attention during the presentations.

For future years, it is intended to incorporate a rubric model to evaluate each member of the workgroup individually by the academic staff and the whole group by students. The rubric model for students will be an application coded in 'Python' language. In addition to the rubric method evaluation, the oral presentations will be video recorded to review and revise the mark proposed by the staff. These new incorporations, intended to promote aspects of self-evaluation and peer evaluation, will enhance honesty in the collaborative work and help teachers with the evaluation process.

Keywords:

Workgroups, evaluation, oral presentation, rubric method.