(1023)TOWARDS THE INTEGRATION OF SUMMATIVE AND FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT TO PROBLEM RESOLUTION SKILLS IN THE ENGINEERING AREA: A CASE STUDY TOWARDS THE INTEGRATION OF SUMMATIVE AND FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT TO PROBLEM RESOLUTION SKILLS IN THE ENGINEERING AREA: A CASE STUDY

摘要

The European Higher Education Framework makes mandatory the teaching of practical skills touniversity students at all competence levels. This implies a review of the traditional teachingmethodologies and the adoption of active ones where the student plays the main role in the teachinglearningprocess. This methodology allows students to develop their own skills and makes themconscious of their knowledge about a specific topic.As it is well known, problem resolution skills in Engineering are traditionally developed by taking notesfrom already solved problems in books or by the academic staff. We have found several weaknessesin this approach: first of all, it results a passive methodology where the average student is not reallyconscious about his own progress or his skills for solving similar problems. Moreover, we have noticedthat even if the student is able to solve a proposed problem, it is used that he finds difficulties toexplain clearly what he has done and why. This means that, although the student has achieved theobjective of struggling with certain kind of problems, he has not developed the desired skills.In this work we present a case study where we integrate a summative and formative assessment anda Problem Based Learning method to a second year Electrical Engineering students group. Theapplied methodology can be summarized as presenting the students not the procedure to solve aparticular kind of problems but a generalized strategy. Then, they have to collaborate in groups tosolve a never seen before exercise and explain it to their partners. A specific rating scale has beendeveloped to evaluate all involved skills. This way we are able to carry on a detailed competencesassessment. We found that students achieved to solve the proposed problems successfully, they wereable to suggest new ones and their motivation and general knowledge improved significantly.