Assessment tools
Evaluation tools
The evaluation tools offer students resources for the practical application of content and facilitate an understanding of the processes and concepts that are specific to the subject. We can design activities for carrying out and applying content practically to offer guidance in the selection and undertaking of activities, with more or less direct tutoring of the students’ work. Many different types of activity can be suggested as well as the complementary resources to carry them out. The activities can also provide tools to facilitate communication among students and teachers, as well as to carry out monitoring and evaluation.
The evaluations should be in line with all the teaching content and activities so that the information supplied is in direct relation to the learning objectives. It is recommended that the evaluation activities are accompanied by a forum for debate so that students can share strategies for good learning practices, problem solving and time management.
The most common evaluation tools are:
Questionnaires
The questionnaires offer a very useful automated system for evaluating thousands of participants. They may be used as progress evaluations so that students can test their level of understanding of the content of the different lessons in the videos. They can also be used as a cumulative method of assessment at the end of the modules and the course. The Coursera platform allows the design of the questionnaires, or quizzes. The type of questions and answers are valid both for quizzes in the video (in video quizzes) and those used at the end of semester and end of course.
The main characteristics of Coursera quizzes are:
- Each question has a predetermined value of 1 but any value may be assigned.
- A predetermined explanation of each answer options may be included (feedback).
- Images, links, code and uploaded files may be used in the questions.
- The correct answer receives a positive score when it is correctly selected or introduced.
- Images, links, code and uploaded files may be used in the answers.
- Options a, b or c
- True or false
- Multiple answer (more than one correct answer)
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Introduction of
- a specific number
- a number within an series
- a series of numbers
- a specific word
- a word in a sentence
- a series of words
- Questions using mathematical formulae
Peer evaluation
This is a way of incorporating the work done in the course evaluation system while solving the problem of teacher marking, which is virtually impossible on this massive scale. The number of assignments to be evaluated by each participant can be set by the instructor. The norm is for each participant to evaluate the work of minimum, three peers.
To make peer assessment easier it is important that the teacher gives clear instruction to the students of how to evaluate the work and an effect rubric for that purpose. Since most students will not be experts in the field but in the learning stage themselves the instructions or rubrics for correction should be simple. See the following article: How to make a rubric, in the Revista de Investigación Médica, nº. 2 (2013), pp. 61-65.
A forum may also be opened about the peer evaluations so that students can give comments and contribute to better quality feedback.
