Abstract:

In Chemical Engineering studies, laboratory-scale training allows students to complement their theoretical education with applied experience, facilitating the development of practical skills. These experimental sessions are usually conducted in teams due to the complexity of the experiments, which facilitates task distribution while also promoting teamwork, technical writing and collective problem-solving through the preparation of group laboratory reports. However, assigning the grade of the group may not accurately represent each student’s individual understanding, procedural competence, or capacity to analyse the experimental data. This constraint is particularly acute in laboratory-based courses, where the expected learning outcomes include both team-based performance and individual proficiency.

This work presents an assessment adaptation implemented in two courses of an undergraduate Chemical Engineering degree in the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Spain: Experimentation in Chemical Engineering III (3rd year, 2nd semester) and Industrial Processes in Chemical Engineering (4th year, 1st semester). In both courses, students submit group reports of each laboratory session they undertake. To individualize grading, while maintaining the pedagogical benefits of group work, an individual test was introduced. The test is designed to assess individually attributable competencies, including the interpretation of results, methodological decisions, error analysis and the reasoning that supports calculations and conclusions.

The quantitative analysis of the adaptation result is organized following a course-specific design. In Experimentation in Chemical Engineering III, two academic years (2021-22 and 2022-23) include both, a group laboratory report and an individualized test, which allows a paired comparison for the same student between the report grade and their individual test score; and the other two academic years (2023-2024 and 2024-2025) only include the individualized test since the group report was removed from the assessment. In Industrial Processes in Chemical Engineering, results are examined by comparing the average grades of group lab reports from three academic years (2021-22, 2022-23, 2023-24) with the individual laboratory test implemented in subsequent cohorts (2024-25 and 2025-26). The analysis of the results will allow us to evaluate the usefulness of the two proposed strategies: incorporating individual assessment while maintaining the group written report, and replacing the report with a written test, to design the assessment of these subjects in subsequent courses.

Keywords:

Chemical Engineering, grading fairness, group work, individualized testing, laboratory assessment.