SCORING RUBRICS IN VIRTUAL EDUCATION ENVIRONMENTS

The integration of Spanish universities into the new European Higher Education Area (EHEA) changes the traditional approach of education based on teaching process to education based on teaching and learning process. In this new scenario, teachers need methods and tools that allow them to focus on student’s competences, as well as, to follow their progress and to guarantee a formative assessment. A particular focus is being placed on evaluation methods that have a strong emphasis on developing skills and attitudes.
Assessment is considered a key element in teaching and learning process due to different reasons. On the one side, because it influences the way in which students afford their learning process. On the other side, because it determines the learning accomplishment level achieved by students. Thus, it is fundamental that learning objectives are consistent with the evaluation process established. However, in spite of the relevance of assessment to contribute to effective learning and to improve students’ motivation, most current evaluation methods are excessively focused on knowledge and do not sufficiently capture the crucial skills and attitudes dimension of key competences (COM, 2009) .
This makes it necessary to do adjustments on the learning methods to fit particular settings and emerging requirements. For this reason, it is necessary to develop methods and tools suitable for evaluation in line with the guidelines of the EHEA.
The main objective of this work is to develop an evaluation project through scoring rubrics in order to evaluate different activities in virtual education environments. Scoring rubrics are descriptive scoring schemes developed by teachers or other evaluators to guide the analysis of the products or processes of students' efforts. The use of an accurately-defined evaluation rubric guarantees the homogeneous and objective evaluation of the students learning, and it also involves students do not have doubts about their evaluation, so evaluation process is more efficient.
This project was addressed to the students of the “Master in Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility”, which is offered by University Jaume I in Castellón and Spanish National University for Distance Education (UNED). This Master is online, therefore, the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) for learning and evaluating are a transversal subject integrated in the Programme. Moreover, the virtual space and the development of the ICT have allowed greater interaction between teachers and students, and have provided a flexible and innovative scenario more suitable to establish the EHEA learning and evaluation model.
It is expected the improvements included in the methodology of evaluation will help students to solve the problems and difficulties they will find as a consequence of the changes that are being included to move from the current educational system. A survey has been designed in order to collect information about students’ opinion regarding evaluation rubric methodology.