The role of the teaching-learning process and assessmentmethodology of the final degree project as a wayof completing education in chemistry

• V. Palomares ^[1] ; O. Castillo ^[1] ; J. Bañuelos ^[1] ; A. Longarte ^[1] ; K. Castro ^[1] ; N. Etxebarria ^[1] ; I. Moreno ; N. Sotomayor ^[1] ; L.A. Fernández ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea

     Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea

     Leioa, España

     
• Localización: Ikaskuntza-irakaskuntza akademikoaren eremu berriak arakatzen / Universidad del País Vasco - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (aut.), 2019, ISBN 978-84-1319-033-4, págs. 903-909
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro (pdf)
• Resumen

  • The Final Degree Project represents an excellent opportunity for applying and testing inquiry/research based learning/teaching methodologies. Last year undergraduate students face, under a closesupervision, applied cases that allow them to reinforce learned concepts and skills, and acquiring newones regarding processing information. Supervisors play a key role in the teaching/learning processesduring this period. Their continuous assessment strengthens the capacities of inquiry, problemresolution and innovation, leading to a substantial improvement of the students’ abilities.In the last 5 years, more than 300 Final Degree Projects in Chemistry have been successfullycarried out and defended in the Faculty of Science and Technology (ZTF/FCT) of the UPV/EHU. Theevaluation process, based on the submission of a final report, and a dissertation defense, is conductedby a panel of lecturers, and does not include any of the supervisors. Up to now, aiming to evaluate allthe students in an unbiased way, the projects have been evaluated following a common criteria adoptedby the Faculty for all the grades. Since this procedure lacks a proper feedback from the supervisors,cannot efficiently evaluate the knowledge gained by the students, and probably, fails to provide aglobal view of the teaching/learning process.Aiming to achieve a more accurate assessment of the knowledge gained by the students, we haveused the experience gathered until now to investigate the validity of the methodology employed in theevaluation of the Final Degree Projects in Chemistry. For this purpose, we have analyzed the strengths,weaknesses, opportunities and threats that this type of works hold. The extracted results have allowedus to identify several aspects that can decisively affect the final outcome of the process, among them:i) The role of the supervisor along the stages of the project development and also, in the final evaluationstep. ii) The collection of evidences (i.e., use of portfolios, intermediate and final assessment, rubrics andquality indicators, etc.) as indicators of the students’ learning progress. iii) The use of intermediate andfinal opinion surveys to obtain students’ feedback on the learning methodologies and the evaluationmechanisms.