A MULTIDISCIPLINARY STRATEGY FOR CONTINUOUS FORMATIVE SELF-EVALUATION IN ENGLISH USING ON-LINE TOOLS
V. Fernandez-Ruiz1,
F. Romero Aguilera1,
P. Morales1,
M.C. Sanchez-Mata1,
M. Camara1,
D. Cordoba-Diaz1,
M. Cordoba-Diaz1,
T. Girbes1,
P. Jimenez1,
C. Chaya2,
B. Urosa3,
I. Muñoz San Roque3 1Complutense University of Madrid, Faculty of Pharmacy (SPAIN)
2Technical University of Madrid, Department. of Agricultural Economics, Statistics and Business Management (SPAIN)
3Comillas Pontifical University, Faculty of Human and Social Sciences (SPAIN)
Background and introduction:
Spanish universities have recognized the importance and necessity of teaching in English in order to increase the competitiveness and excellence of their students by meeting one of the most demanded requirements by companies. Other universities experiences showed an improvement in students aptitude and attitude when English teaching is included in their programs. In this sense, continuous self-assessment in English constitutes a tool of great potential mainly for students, protagonist of the evaluation-learning process.
Kahoot! is an educational platform and a game-based response system that allows the teacher to launch a multiple-choice questions set for student self-evaluation and to introduce a subject and formative assessment. A set of questions can be projected in the classroom, and played by the whole class in real-time, answering on their own personal device.
Objective:
The main objective of the present study was to establish a system of continuous self-evaluation in English based on the accomplishment of multiple-choice test, with an educational platform to perform tests on-line in the classroom using their own mobile devices. It is also an important objective to improve the designed tests using the Cronbach’s alpha to elucidate the reliability of the results.
Material and methods:
This multidisciplinary strategy was implemented in different studies in Health Sciences area: Degree on Pharmacy, Nutrition and Dietetics and Food Science and Technology.
Free on-line Kahoot platform was used to design and perform multiple-choice tests in English that the students could mark in a few minutes using their own mobile devices. The answers were commented with them during the test to establish a constructive discussion. The results obtained of each test were downloaded by the teacher and evaluated in terms of reliability using the software MS-Excel Complement.
Results:
The use of multiple choice questions through Kahoot game provides a promising tool for continuous self-evaluation of the students. A weakness found in the use of this strategy is due to the fact that it requires a stable and excellent WiFi network connection, and/or a good device reception in order to run properly..
The proposed methodology, constitute a promising new system of continuous formative self-evaluation in English, increasing the motivation of students to discuss about the proposed subject allowing teachers to create a question database in English for the design of objective tests and an innovative system, free of charge, for the university.