Abstract:

The report presents the results of innovation projects carried out by the author during the fisrt semester of the academic year 2015-2016, focused in self-assessment during the teaching and learning processes.

The projects have been applied in the second level subject “Mathematical Fundamentals in Architecture 2” of the Architectural Fundamentals Degree offered by the University of Seville, having been focused on creating a challenging communication environment (from the view point of teaching and learning processes), using the advantages offered by new technologies and promoting team working in a broad sense, emphasizing individual responsibility and also group interaction.

The projects have been designed for two groups of approximately 35 students, the majority of them signing on for the above mentioned subject for the first time.

The self-assessment activities consisted in:
- reflective essays on the own learning at that moment or after a given activity
- explicit correction tasks on their own work, comparing it with a given exemplar
- feedback checklists of accomplishments, where students are asked to measure themselves against these accomplishments
- evaluation question writing, where students are asked to draw up their own questions for a hypothetical evaluation.

This methodology enables students to better understand both subject as assessment process and goals, and also to work towards improving their own performance.

Our approach enables students to have more capacity of autonomy and responsibility together with more reasoning abilities.

The students have been engaged through the (qualitative, not quantitative) evaluations of their own presentations or results.

After the experience acquired with the study, we consider that the self-assessment activities promote deeper, student centered learning, improve student engagement, consolidate learning, develop judgement skills and that the self-assessment ability should be seen as a lifelong skill.

The results have been positively evaluated by the participants. One of the main topics of further work consists in adding some other constructive alternative evaluation techniques, for instance the peer-assessments and the interviews, maybe in the framework of a virtual platform.