Abstract:

OBJETIVE:
To assess the student’s own perception of learning in three computing practice groups, including students in classical teaching (CT) and new educational techniques (NET) groups.

INTRODUCTION:
Usually, students in computing practice techniques in biopharmaceutics and pharmacokinetics (3rd course in School of Pharmacy) are evaluated by solving an exam about knowledge acquired during lessons. The exam is solved with the aid of the notes that students have compiled during practical lessons, so the aim of the exam is not to check if the student has memorized the results but to ensure that students are able to answer the questions and solve the practical problems proposed by the professor.
However, these answers are solved in groups (2-3 students) and it may be possible that all students do not achieve the same level of understanding, and the exam mark may be not correlated with this fact i.e. the exam mark do not reflect if the learning objective of the practice is accomplished. In this way, the aim of this work was to evaluate the student’s opinion about its own knowledge.

METHODOLOGY:
Three computing practice techniques groups with the same professor were selected, including students in CT (63 students) and students in NET groups (27 students). The lessons were conducted in the same way that previous experiences, and at the end of the exam, the students were asked about the exam mark that they consider they should obtain (0-10 points). Then, the exams were corrected and statistical tests were performed in order to determine the existence of differences and/or correlation between real exam mark (REM) and self-assessed exam mark (SAEM).

RESULTS:
Whole data set was analyzed (n=90) in order to show the main performance in students.
The SAEM were on average larger than REM (0.219 points). However, the statistical test (t-student test) does not show significance in these differences (p>0.05). A correlation between SAEM and REM was observed (Pearson’s coefficient=0.291, p<0.05), so students who consider larger SAEM, they obtained larger REM.
When CT and NET were evaluated separately, they obtain similar results: SAEM were on average larger than REM (0.225 points in CT students and 0.204 points in NET students), but differences were not found to be statistically significant and no correlation was observed (p>0.05).
The students’ s own perception of learning evaluated by gender, shows that SAEM and REM were no correlated (p>0.05) in both groups and did not show statistical differences between SAEM and REM averages but it seems that male student’s differences between SAEM and REM are larger (0.590 points) than in female students (0.106 points).

CONCLUSIONS:
The students included in this study show a realistic point of view about their own learning progress and knowledge acquirement during practical lessons. Moreover, this knowledge acquirement has been demonstrated to be high (real exam mark average on 8.114 points).

Keywords:

perception of learning.