Abstract:

Undergraduate students evaluation is very frequently performed by correcting tasks which are given to the students (exams, reports, oral presentations, etc.). A key part for the learning process of the students is the clear identification of the mistakes and errors performed in these tasks, which will solve erroneous concepts and will avoid future repetition of these mistakes. This implies for the lecturers to provide a detailed marking of the tasks delivered by the students, which has to be provided to them before the next similar task is requested, otherwise the errors found in the previous task will continue.

In undergraduate teaching labs, students are typically asked to deliver a report of each lab session performed. This report many times follows the typical structure of a research report or article and it is formed by an introduction, the experimental part, the results and discussion, the conclusions, and finally the references. Undergraduate students frequently fail to provide good quality reports, due to different difficulties that they experience, such as the clear identification of the content that should go in each of these sections, the suitable report of the obtained results using tables or graphs, the adequate discussion of the results, and the identification of the main conclusions. In order for them to learn properly how to make a high quality report, it is very important to provide a detailed correction of the reports delivered, and that the students have a clear knowledge of the mistakes performed before performing the next report.

In order to improve this evaluation process, I have performed video corrections of the reports delivered at each teaching lab session by undergraduate students of the Materials Technology subject in the 4th course of the Industrial Technology Engineering degree. I recorded the computer’s screen and my voice with screen casting software (Screencastify) while detecting the errors in the students reports, which are typically delivered in .pdf format. During the recording, apart from their reports, other supporting materials can be shown, such as figures, notes, or other similar documents, which can contribute to a clearer explanation of the mistakes. The video corrections were brief and kept no longer than 10 min. These video corrections had a remarkable acceptance within the students, which are highly accustomed to watch short videos in the internet, and provided a more visual and friendly feedback of the errors performed, helping them to learn how to make better reports, solve incorrect conceptions, and eventually obtain a better final result in the subject.

Keywords:

Video correction, teaching lab, video evaluation.