Abstract:

Traditional monolithic approaches to evaluation and assessment in STEM Education have been extensively used in higher education institutions. There is a great debate worldwide and numerous studies for the need to move away from typical assessment tasks to more flexible, transparent and participatory methods for evaluation and assessment. Such methods should involve criteria and strategies of active student engagement including an effective feedback process with self-evaluating capacities. In this study, we summarize from a critical literature review the main aspects for this new emerging era of assessment and evaluation. We present a thorough discussion of pros and cons of all these approaches and we also comment on the practical difficulties and limitations. The main contribution of this research is a taxonomy of integrative qualitative factors, mainly assessment components that should be integrated in the evaluation procedure in higher education STEM courses. One additional contribution is the discussion of a qualitative research survey run with the participation of academics from universities worldwide in regard to educational objectives and the need to revise this typical approach to evaluation with more elements and more dimensions.

Keywords:

Assessment, Evaluation, Educational Objectives, Participatory Evaluation, STEM.