Comunicar 39-ingles - Revista Comunicar

164Comunicar, 39, XX, 2012Figure 1. Category addressed in each technique and its value.Likewise, there are many references in the text inrelation to continuous assessment, with students especiallyvaluing this point (all 17 course students). In fact,this is why most of them consider it a good assessmentsystem: «Overall I thought it was a good assessmentsystem, taking into account the course’s characteristics.The system used has made us work on the content ona daily basis. With the individual and group activities,and participation in the forums, you can achieve sucha goal» (student).The students generally consider the individualactivities requested by the teachers as a very effectivetool to ensure the quality of the course’s assessmentsystem. As for the Assessment of Group Activities(AGA), students mainly ignored this category, butthose who answered (3 out of 17) were very positivein their judgment, as one student says: «With the finalproject I was able to consolidate the contents dealtwith on the course, and to study in depth other relatedissues».The students know that these activities do notwork on their own and they point out as positiveaspects both the maintenance of the platform wherethe activities were found and the tutoring by the courseteachers-tutors.In relation to the tools used for the videoconference(AVID), the students said their experience of theforums was positive, and the tools themselves werehighly rated; once again they emphasized the continuousfeedback from the teachers-tutors. Regardingthe Assessment via Videoconference category, studentswant more eye contact throughout the course, withoccasional videoconferences every so often.b) Interview with a course student. In the assessmentof Individual Activities Requested from theStudent (AIA), the interviewee appreciates the factthat more value orweight is given tothe activities sinceshe considers that«it is the best wayto learn».As for theAssessment of GroupActivities (AGA),the online chat ex -perience was notrated very highlybecause the studentsfound it difficultto establisheffective writtencommunication, and so the tool was not well-re -ceived. In Assessment via Videoconference (AVID),the student addressed the assessment issue to ensurethat the person behind the screen and the person carry -ing out the exercises was really the person studying forthe diploma, which is closely related to the reliabilitysub-category of General Aspects of the Assessment. Ina very subjective manner the student says: «In my casethe grade obtained is reliable, but I do not know ifsome people could be cheating, I hadn’t even thoughtabout that. Yesterday I told my grandmother, thatsomebody could do another person’s exercises, butmaybe I am not very clever and had not thought ofthat».c) Focus group. In our analysis of the two focusgroups set up with the course teachers-tutors the teachersrate the course highly in terms of the GeneralAspects of the Assessment (GAA). A recurring topicwas that of assessment criteria, namely the percentageallocation criteria, as several of the teachers (6 out of8 teachers-tutors) believe that the individual activitiesshould have more weight due to the work done by thestudents and their personal participation.Regarding the Assessment of Individual ActivitiesRequested from the Student (AIA), the teachers-tutorsadmit that these activities enabled to them to make amore accurate assessment, since they helped them toget to the students they were evaluating: «What happensis that on a course like this, with so few students,and intense supervision, the assessment has been continuous.We carried out an extremely accurate assessmentof who they were, what they were doing, whythey were not doing it, why they were late submittingthe activities» (course teacher-tutor).As for the Assessment of Group Activities (AGA),the views varied: 60% of the teachers argue that no© ISSN: 1134-3478 • e-ISSN: 1988-3293• Pages 159-167