Abstract:

Outcome based education is a key objective in higher education nowadays. Accreditation agencies and governmental regulations determine the main outcomes that a program should develop to be granted. One of those outcomes is “Contemporary issue knowledge” and it forms part of Biotechnology degree program in Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain). An activity was designed related to this outcome in a group of 115 students in a first year General Genetics subject. In the activity, students worked in groups of 5-6 people and they had to elaborate a screencast presentation of a contemporary topic related to the subject. The topic was chosen by the students from a list provided by the teachers. Instructions, material and rubrics were previously delivered to the students. The screencast presentation was elaborated with the collaborative tool Google Drive and the students recorded their voice using free internet tools like Screencast-o-matic. Assessment of contemporary issue activity was done by the student, his/her peers and teachers according to provided rubrics. Final assessment of the activity contributed to the final mark of the subject. Twenty one groups of students were formed and they elaborated screencast from ten different topics. Each of them elaborated a Google Drive presentation in group and submitted to the teachers and his/her partners. Although improvements should be implemented, this activity could be a good tool to assess contemporary issue knowledge outcome in subjects with a high number of students.

Keywords:

Rubrics, self, peer and teacher assessment, collaborative tools.