Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 459 de 957
Does continuous evaluation drive us to mediocrity?
María Jesús Villamide, Rosa Carabaño, David Menoyo, María R. Alvir
mariajesus.villamide@upm.es , rosa.carabano@upm.es , david.menoyo@upm.es ,
mariar.alvir@upm.es
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Spain
Abstract: The academic results of a group of 35 students following an Animal
Production course of 90 h in the fourth year of Agriculture Engineering School
were used in this study. The evaluation of the learning process took into account
i) self-assessment tests ii) day to day exercises or problems performed on-site or
on-line iii) objective on-line tests and iv) writing test. The scores ranged from 0
to 9.5 in each task whereas the global score ranged from 3.7 to 8.5. The
discrimination indexes of each task, except the self-assessment one, were high
(averaged 0.48) which indicates their good design. The capacity of analysis and
synthesis and the writing skills of the students were evaluated by means of
written test and afterwards classified in three groups. No statistical differences
were observed among the scores obtained by students of different writing skill
abilities. However, the capacity of analysis and synthesis had a significant effect
on all task (P