Abstract:

The experimental subjects in science degrees often require particular evaluation systems to grade the assessment of the experimental skills (perform measurements, do an adequate data analysis to compute some parameters and reach some conclusions, among others). Besides, it is important that the evaluation procedure guides the students and ensures the acquisition of the skills worked in the subject. One of these evaluation systems that is commonly used to assess laboratory reports is the rubric or checklist. It is especially recommended in subjects where there are different teachers to homogenize correction criteria. The rubric contains a series of instructions to guide the student in performing the data analysis and how the different parts of the report will be evaluated (in addition to clearly indicate the mistakes that are not allowed to pass the report).

We have introduced the use of rubrics to evaluate laboratory’s reports in the experimental subjects of the degree of physics during the years 2022-2023 and 2023-2024. The objectives of our study were twofold. First, we aimed at unifying and homogenize the correcting criteria along the whole degree. Our second intention was to examine if the use of rubric (available to students before writing the report) would enhance the learning process. Therefore, for the different lab subjects, a rubric was created for some experiments, following the same criteria adapted to the learning objectives of every year (the number and type of skills to be achieved are progressively increased during the different years of the degree).

Every rubric is divided in sections (those expected to be found in a lab report) and the specific skills to be developed in every of these sections are stated. Students are assigned to perform a certain number of lab reports during the year, but only one sole rubric (for a chosen experiment) is available to them. Afterwards, the results of the learning assessment for the reports written with and without an available rubric were quantitatively analyzed by means of the gain parameter introduced in Cox and Junkin III (2002). This parameter quantifies the improvement in the different skills to be achieved in writing a lab report comparing the experiment which has an available rubric and the one without it. Moreover, the assessment has been also compared to the lab’s reports (of the same experiments) by students in the previous years. The outcome of our study indicate that the rubric produces a gain in the results section of the report for the experiments with an available rubric. However, it does not show a direct benefit in the report for experiments without rubric, although assessment criteria are qualitatively the same. A strengthening of the relation between them should be object of further work.

References:
[1] Anne J Cox and William F Junkin III 2002 Phys. Educ. 37 37

Keywords:

Assessment, rubric, laboratory.