Abstract:

The Teaching Innovation and Improvement project, entitled "On-line evaluation mechanisms for graphic subjects" is subsidized by the Vice-rectorate for Teaching Staff and Institutional Promotion of the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT). It’s being developed within six months of time. The project is focused on evaluating and analyzing the different formulas of on-line assessment that have been used at the UPCT during the covid-19 pandemic, specifically in graphic design subjects such as Graphic Ideation, Architectural Analysis and Drawing, Graphic Geometry, Graphic Expression, Artistic Expression, Architectural Projects and Architectural Composition at the Architecture School (ETSAE). In order to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each of those mechanisms and their better or worse adaptation to the different subjects, we start from a theoretical approach based on the latest publications on distance assessment due to covid: e.g. Report on initiatives and tools for online university assessment in the context of Covid-19 of the Spanish Ministry of Universities or the COVID-19: 10 Recommendations to plan distance learning solutions, by UNESCO. Special attention has been paid to those mentioned documents to ensure that the considered theoretical approaches are appropriated to the technical and software possibilities that the UPCT has.

Possible assessment systems to be applied at the UPCT are:
- Elaboration of works and portfolios on contents to be developed.
- Continuous assessment: partial deliveries of work
- Live exams through video surveillance with graphic approaches.
- Examinations on drawing up plans or perspectives from real photographs / partial plans of the views of the object

Specific characteristics of those assessment systems have been examined through surveys carried out among ETSAE teaching staff and students of different academic years and, moreover, quality interviews with the staff in charge of the “UPCT-evalúa” platform, used mainly by UPCT teachers during the pandemic.

The improvement objectives pursued in this project can be extrapolated to other universities. Those are as follows:
A) At the individual level of the teaching staff:
- New recommendations for on-line assessment, adapted to eminently graphic subjects.
- Suggestions for new methods of monitoring student learning.
B) At "organisational", departmental, school or university level:
- Improvements in internal on-line assessment processes.

All these conclusions will be presented in the proposed communication for the EDULEARN Conference 2021.

Keywords:

On-line assesment, evaluation system, graphic subjects, architecture.