Abstract:

The creation of the European Higher Education Area started with the signature of the Bologna Declaration in July 19th, 1999. The convergence of higher education institutions involves the homologation of university studies in Europe and the creation of an open space for students, faculty, administrative staff and graduates. A change in the assessment of the learning process of students was encouraged. Peer assessment, in which students comment on and judge the work of their classmates, has a key role in formative assessment. Peer assessment is grounded on theories of active learning, whose main advantages are that students increase their self-confidence and self-reliance, so they are more likely to find personally meaningful problem solutions or interpretations. Active learning strategies often involve complex, student-centered interactions between professors, students, and communities. Moreover, it can also be used as a component in a summative assessment context.

During the last years, the assessment of oral presentation skills has been under-researched. The aim of this study was to evaluate the correspondence between lecturer assessment and peer assessment of oral presentation skills. Oral presentation skills were prepared in the context of ‘Molecular genetics’, a compulsory subject (6 ECTS) taught in the third semester of the Bachelor’s Degree in Biotechnology of the School of Agricultural Engineering and Environment, Universitat Politècnica de València. The lessons were taught in Spanish (native language of teachers and most of the students) or English, depending on the groups. Five papers per session, showing different Bloom´s categories, were evaluated in two lab lessons. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for student´s assessment and its deviation was carried out in order to study the effects of the different Bloom´s categories and of the language used for lessons. A regression analysis was also performed to study the relationship between student and professor assessments.

No differences were found between papers of neither different Bloom´s categories (knowledge vs. compression level) nor language (Spanish vs. English group). Similar results were obtained when assessment deviation was analysed. These results are positive, indicating no influence of these effects on the marks obtained by the students. The averages of student and professor assessments were very close, 9.51 and 9.52, respectively. However, the coefficient of correlation for student and professor assessments showed a moderate positive correlation (0.421). The coefficient of variation for the linear model was not high (R2 =17.76%). However, it showed the best goodness of the most common models. Therefore, student peer assessment is a good method to encourage students to be more critical and to take part more actively in their learning process. Additionally, students may feel more confident when they agree with professor assessment. Despite that, a rubric, i.e. a scoring scale used to assess the performance of students along a task-specific set of criteria, could improve the correlation between student´s peer assessment and professor´s assessment. The inclusion of the rubric will be implemented in the evaluation of the oral presentation skills in the next course.

Keywords:

Active learning, biotechnology, Bloom´s categories.