Abstract:

Spanish universities are going through an important change, resulting from the introduction of the European Higher Education Area. One of the most important challenges is incorporating new methodologies allowing for a greater development of students’ skills, which are largely based on increased student participation and on continuous assessment. The theoretical foundations that support that these methods lead to improved results are clearly defined by the literature, and therefore it is necessary to gauge the students’ opinions in order to see what they think about the issue.
In this paper, the results of a study will be shown, carried out in a module entitled “Human Resource Management” in Tourism Management Diploma at the University of Alicante.
The purposes of this paper are the following: (a) to explore the students’ preferences regarding the methodology to be applied, and (b) to gauge the students’ degree of satisfaction with the continuous assessment system.
The results show that the students’ satisfaction with the continuous assessment system is very high, and the same applies to their opinion on the tools required for such continuous assessment. Special mention is made of the information on assessment criteria, the easy assimilation of contents, or the fact that the modules are easier to keep up with.
However, although the students have a positive view of continuous assessment, many of them still prefer that the learning process should be based on the role of the teacher. More specifically, many students prefer individual to group work, do not enjoy the requirement that work should be presented to the rest of the class, and would prefer neither attendance nor individual tutorials to be compulsory. This indicates that students are in favour of continuous assessment, but still prefer many of the components of traditional teaching.
These results prove that, although the methodologies appear to be following the right path, a lot of work remains to be done in order to change the students’ culture in our classroom.

Keywords:

Continous assessment, EHEA.