Evaluation as a Key Element of the Learning Process: Contributions From Environmental Education.

Author(s):

María José Bautista-Cerro(presenting / submitting)María Ángeles Murga-Menoyo

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

06. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures

Format:

Paper

Session Information

06 SES 14, Leadership and Evaluation

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-13

15:30-17:00

Room:

D-406

Chair:

Petra Grell

Contribution

The team of the UNESCO Chair in Environmental Education and Sustainable Development of the UNED has maintained over the years a line of research and educational innovation in order to improve the training process of its students.

In this paper, we present the latest project that took place in the past academic year in the Environmental Education course, taught in the Degree of Social Education at the UNED.

This subject contributes to the achievement of the competences set out in the Social Education Degree, emphasizing on the ethical perspective, focused on the values that support sustainable development. This project seeks to value collaboration over competition and to encourage helping behaviors, support and solidarity, which are basic issues to accomplish the learning achievements marked in the subject.

The project emphasizes student involvement in assessment processes from the very beginning of the work, and the achievement of consensus even in the evaluation criteria. It also promoted the self-assessment, peer assessment of individual activities and the evaluation of the work done by each group member.

The specific objectives of the project were marked as follow:

To encourage student’s active and participative learning.
To strengthen the critical and self-critical capacity of the students.
To encourage the student’s implication with the aims of the subject.
To promote values of cooperation and reciprocity.

Method

UNED´s methodology, inherent to distance education, requires designing a project that can be entirely developed in an educational platform, in our case aLF. The project includes various individual and group activities, designed by the teaching team, relevant in the final grade, which students must do in sequence. Among the activities, students had to complete the following: 1. To agree on evaluation criteria within the collaborative learning group. 2. To individually perform an activity designed by the teaching team and expose it to the group. Group members could make comments and input to other’s work. 3. To evaluate their own activity as well as the colleagues’. 4. To evaluate each of your colleagues based on contributions made to their work, the help and the attitude showed in the group. To carry out the activities, study groups were formed each one with five components which had the usual tools, forums, shared space for documents, discussion chats etc.. During the project development planning, the teaching team estimated that participating on the project would require a mean student 25 hours, the equivalent to 1 ECTS.

Expected Outcomes

The evaluation of the experience shows a positive balance. The project facilitates the student's presence in the evaluation process from the initial stage to reach a consensus on the evaluation criteria promoting values of cooperation and responsibility. It was determined that the activity as a whole, promotes the active and participative learning of students, identified as one of the project's objectives. It also promotes student involvement in the course objectives. Furthermore, the need to assess their own activity as well as the colleagues’ activity reinforces the critical and self-critical capacity of the participants. Finally, the most enriching experience of this project certainly is the possibility to develop collaborative work, not from competition but from the collaboration. This issue also delves into the values of cooperation and reciprocity that are promoted by environmental education. It should be noted as the main strengths the two following experiences: a) the strength of the methodology to motivate the study, b) student satisfaction. The perceived weaknesses of the project were: a) the requirement of intensive teaching commitment making it difficult its generalization.

References

BORDAS, M.I. y CABRERA, F.A. (2001). Estrategias de evaluación de los aprendizajes centrados en el proceso. Revista Española de Pedagogía, nº 218, 25-48 BRETONES, A. (2008, a). Participación del alumnado de Educación Superior en su evaluación. Revista de Educación, nº 347, 181-202. BRETONES, A. (2008, b). La práctica de la autoevaluación y la evaluación por los compañeros. En Brown, S. y Glasner, A. (Ed.). Evaluar en la universidad. Problemas y nuevos enfoques. Madrid: Narcea 191-201. IBARRA SÁIZ, M.S. y RODRÍGUEZ GÓMEZ, G. (2010). Aproximación al discurso dominante de la evaluación del aprendizaje en la universidad. Revista de Educación, nº 351, 381-407. LÓPEZ NOGUEIRA, F. (2005). Metodología participativa en la Enseñanza Universitaria. Madrid: Narcea. PADILLA, M.T. y GIL, J. (2008). La evaluación orientada al aprendizaje en la Educación Superior: condiciones y estrategias para su aplicación en la docencia universitaria. Revista Española de Pedagogía, nº 241, 467-486. RODRÍGUEZ GÓMEZ, G. (DIR.). EvalHIDA: Evaluación de Competencias con Herramientas de Interacción Dialógica Asíncronas (foros, blogs y wikis). Cádiz: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cádiz.

Author Information

María José Bautista-Cerro (presenting / submitting)

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

Teoría de la Educación y Pedagogía Social

Madrid

María Ángeles Murga-Menoyo

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)