Validation of Student Peer Assessment of Effective Oral Communication in Engineering Degrees

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permissíon from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertisíng or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.[EN] Peer assessment is a form of collaborative learning in which students evaluate learning products prepared by other students. We present the results of an analysis of the assessment of oral presentations by students. A group of students solves a problem, writes a document with the solution, and makes an oral presentation in class to other students. Another group assesses the written document and oral presentation. To help students perform the assessments, two rubrics are provided along with other guidance documents that help in writing scientific documents and performing oral presentations. The rubric evaluates five factors of oral communication. The results of the student evaluations are compared with the simultaneous evaluations produced by two lecturers. When making a comparison of the global assessment between lecturers and students, we find significant differences. However, when the factor "use of auxiliary resources" is removed, these differences disappear as the factor introduces a difficult to justify dispersion. In addition, the assessment performed by students with and without the help of a rubric is compared and no significant differences are found.Meseguer Dueñas, JM.; Vidaurre, A.; Molina Mateo, J.; Riera Guasp, J.; Martínez Sala, RM. (2018). Validation of Student Peer Assessment of Effective Oral Communication in Engineering Degrees. IEEE-RITA: Latin-American Learning Technologies Journal. 13(1):11-16. https://doi.org/10.1109/RITA.2018.2801897S111613

Validation of student peer assessment in effective oral communication in engineering degrees

[EN] Peer assessment is a form of collaborative learning in which the students evaluate learning products of other students. In this paper we present the results of the analysis of the assessment between students of oral presentations. A group of students solves a problem, writes a document with the resolution and makes an oral presentation in class for the rest of the students. Another group assesses both, the written document and the oral presentation. To help students to do the assessments two rubrics are provided along with other guidance documents which help in writing scientific documents and performing oral presentations. Regarding the oral communication, the rubric evaluates 5 factors. The result of the students¿ evaluation is compared with the simultaneous evaluation of two professors. When making a comparison of the global assessment between professors and students we find significant differences. However, when the factor ¿use of auxiliary resources¿ is removed these differences disappear, since that factor introduces dispersion difficult to be justified. In addition, the assessment performed by students with and without the help of a rubric is compared. In this case we do not find significant differences.Los autores desean agradecer al Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación de la Universitat Politècnica de València (España) el apoyo al Grupo de Innovación Docente e-MACAFI y el apoyo financiero a través del proyecto PIME/2014/A025Meseguer Dueñas, JM.; Vidaurre, A.; Molina Mateo, J.; Riera Guasp, J.; Martínez Sala, RM. (2017). Validación de la Evaluación entre Compañeros en la Comunicación Oral Efectiva en los Estudios de Ingeniería. VAEP-RITA. 5(2):70-75. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/153372S70755

A collaborative working model for enhancing the learning process of science & engineering students

Science and engineering education are mostly based on content assimilation and development of skills. However, to adequately prepare students for today's world, it is also necessary to stimulate critical thinking and make them reflect on how to improve current practices using new tools and technologies. In this line, the main motivation of this research consists in exploring ways supported by technology to enhance the learning process of students and to better prepare them to face the challenges of today's world. To this end, the purpose of this work is to design an innovative learning project based on collaborative work among students, and research its impact in achieving better learning outcomes, generating of collective intelligence and further motivation. The proposed collaborative working model is based on peer review assessment methodology implemented through a learning web-platform. Thus, students were encouraged to peer review their classmates' works. They had to make comments, suggest improvements, and assess final assignments. Teaching staff managed and supervised the whole process. Students were selected from computer science engineering at the University of Alicante (Spain). Results suggested greater content assimilation and enhanced learning in several scientific skills. The students' final grade exceeded what any student could produce individually, but we cannot conclude that real collective intelligence was generated. Learning methodologies based on the possibilities of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide new ways to transmit and manage knowledge in higher education. Collaborating in peer assessment enhances the students' motivation and promotes the active learning. In addition, this method can be very helpful and time saving for instructors in the management of large groups