DESIGN AND APPLICATION OF A RUBRIC FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF PRACTICAL SESSIONS LEARNING IN AGROCHEMICAL AND FOOD ORGANIC CHEMISTRY

Agrochemical and Food Organic Chemistry is an optative subject that is thought for students in the fourth course of the Chemistry degree at the University of Extremadura. This course is divided in theoretical and practical sessions. Laboratory sessions play an important role in the whole learning of this subject and, in general, in the chemistry curriculum.

This paper describes how to evaluate the learning achieved during the performance of experimental activities using rubrics. The students sample consisted of fourteen participants, whom were grouped into pairs. The length of the laboratory sessions was four hours.

It is important to point out that the rubric was provided to the student before the beginning of the practical lessons, so they know the criteria of the evaluation in advance; this allows them to focus in the most important aspects considered by the lecturers.
At the end of the course, the students opinion about the rubric was analyzed using a simple questionnaire, which consisted of several multiple-choice questions about the usefulness of the rubric doing the lab session.

The use of the rubric to assess the laboratory work appeared to have been successful from both the student and teacher point of view.