Abstract:

A novel teaching evaluation methodology is being developed within the Material Science and Metallurgical department at the University of Oviedo. This work is carried out with students belonging to two different degrees. Students from Mechanical Engineering degree and students pursuing Master’s Degree in Integrity and Durability of Materials, Components and Structures.

In order to improve communicative skills in a more and more competitive world, students presented a scientific work focus on Materials Engineering. Each student presented their scientific work in front of the professor and their classmates for 10 minutes time. The proposed novel evaluation methodology is based on self-evaluation by the student and aims to increase motivation in the classroom. In a first step, student is evaluated by the profesor and their classmates, following nine different criteria such as structure of presentation, time, clarity of exposition, among other. Criteria are scored from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree). After the presentation, each student did a constructive criticism about the developed work, according to the received scoring. After this, students, with a score below the pre-set limit, had to present again their scientific work in a second stage, focusing on the weak points. Results evidenced this evaluation methodology played a big role to increase the motivation among the students and improve communication skills, what directly influenced their final marks in a positive way.

Keywords:

Material Science, self-evaluation, motivation, communication skills.