Abstract:

Rubrics are a technique to help teachers, and/or students to assess the learning process (activities, tasks, and exams). A rubric is mainly composed of a) the set of categories to assess; b) the different criteria for each category; and c) the marks for evaluating the learning activity. In this paper we present and analyze the use of rubrics to evaluate a Project Based Learning (PBL) experience.

In the advanced database subjects of the Computer Science degree at Jaume I University, a Project Based Learning method has been applied to improve the learning process. The formative project has been spread over theory, problems, and lab sessions. Furthermore, PBL has been combined with teamworking to foster the basic competencies development in this field. In our methodology, at the beginning of the project, a real enterprise case is presented, and the students have to design, develop, and implement the information system of that case in a specific DataBase Management System (DBMS).

Our PBL involves different team-based activities. Although some of them are simple and they are used to introduce new database concepts to students, core activities are complex and imply problem analysis, critical reasoning, and decision making. These latter activities are related to conceptual, logical, and physical database design. Moreover, they also require database implementation in the DBMS, creation of different business rules, as well as a final report, including a backup of the resulting database.

In our experience, the working teams are composed by four students which have to perform different learning activities. The PBL is developed in two rounds of four core activities. In each round, every student of a team has to lead an activity. Once all teammates have already led one core activity, the first round is considered completed, and they have to lead a new activity in the second round.

Finally, for each round, each student evaluates all teammates (including him/herself). The evaluation is done using a rubric that covers seven skills:
1) contribution and participation;
2) attitude;
3) responsibility;
4) attendance;
5) punctuality;
6) conflict resolution; and
7) leadership.

To develop the peer evaluations, the CoRubrics tool is used. It is a Google spreadsheet complement to automatize the students pooling process. This tool creates a form based on the rubric and, in addition, with the email addresses of the students, the form is automatically sent to them. Finally, when students fill out the forms, CoRubrics collects and process all data to facilitate a statistical analysis.

After each assessment, results are presented to the teams. Thus, each student is aware of the evaluation made by the rest of the teammates, and they can compare these evaluations with his/her auto-evaluation. Moreover, CoRubrics allows teachers to identify special misconducts when low marks are obtained in the evaluation of any of the considered skills in the rubric. The results confirm the benefits of the method, as we observe that after the first evaluation, students improve their work and their skills.

Keywords:

Project-based learning, rubrics, assessment, teamwork.