(711) THE USE OF ONLINE FORMATIVE SELF-ASSESSMENT TO IMPROVE LEARNING IN SCIENCE: CASE STUDY IN CHEMISTRY LABORATORY PRACTICES FOR AGRONOMY ENGINEERING STUDENTS

摘要

The main objective of the Chemistry laboratory practices in Agronomy Engineering is to show experimentally some of the theoretical contents. Nevertheless, one of the main problems we face when teaching Chemistry to 1st course students of Agronomy Engineering degree is that some of them have not ever been in a Chemistry laboratory before and, therefore, they find it very difficult to pass their laboratory practices exam (summative assessment) without any extra-support. In this work, we applied online formative self-assessment with the objective to offer an extra-support to the students to reach the level need to pass the laboratory practices exam. With this goal in mind, we have used the blackboard learn tool to design a five-question test available online after each laboratory session. The premise to build each question was “teach while assessing”, trying to teach while the student is reading the question so that the student can use this acquired knowledge when answering the question. The online formative self- assessments were offered to the students only during the second four-month period as a voluntary class assignment. At the end of the school year, we evaluated the influence of formative assessment on the summative assessment, comparing the existence of improvement in the final laboratory practices exam results. The 80% of the students, who realized self-assessment during the second four-month period, improved their result in the final exam of laboratory practices in relation to those obtained at the end of the first four-month period. Conversely, only the 50% of the students that did not perform selfassessment were able to improve their results in the same situation. These and other evidences of this case study, show important indications that by using online formative self-assessment designed with the premise of “teach while assessing”, students can improve the understanding of the Chemistry laboratory practices.