Abstract:

The university teaching system is aware of the relevance of synergetic roles of theoretical aspects and practical training in students’ learning. However, students’ community do not devote the same efforts to assimilate practical concepts. In this contribution, we present our experience when evaluating students on the knowledge acquired from the practical lessons; particularly, of a compulsory subject in which practice contents represent 33.3% of the ECTS credits. After the first academic year of implementation of the subject (08-09) it was possible to verify that the marks of the practical exam, which consisted of a 10 true-false questions test, were much worse than ones of the theoretical exam, although they were took simultaneously. In view of the results and in order to improve students’ performance, we decided to promote self-learning by on-line tests through poliformaT, the Sakai-based online platform for UPV (Universitat Politècnica de València).
The learning goals related to the contents of the practice lessons were captured in 50 true-false questions which were introduced in poliformaT by creating a battery which was later used for generating the online tests. Tests were designed for randomly selecting 10 questions of the battery, each student having four opportunities with no limit of time. In order to provide feed-back to students, comments on correctly and incorrectly answered questions were included. Tests were not compulsory, but presented to students as a tool for self-assessment and learning. The exam was equal for all students and created similarly to the tests.
The experience was evaluated comparing the results of the academic year 08-09, in which no specific activities were proposed, and after having applied the learning activity in the following academic years (09-10 and 10-11). The response of the students was very good since almost 80% took the tests even if these were not compulsory. Furthermore, results were very satisfactory, since none of the students failed the exam in the last two years vs. 51% in the first one; the percentage of marks above 9/10 also increased significantly from 5% (08-09) to 87% (09-10) and 74% (10-11), indicating that students had largely achieved the learning goals. A progressive increase in the number of students that take part of the exam at the end of the course was also identified.

Keywords:

Self-learning, e-learning, self-assessment, practical lessons.