Keywords:evaluation, teaching-learning, techniques, instruments.

Abstract

Most definitions about evaluation are framed in a normative pattern, as a formal requirement with little or no pedagogical value that does not arise with a constructive sense, as an option to review the teaching-learning process in order to value them and take decisions that contribute to improving this process.

The present essay is based on a documentary inquiry and the author’s own experience that allows to corroborate that, by taking the evaluation as a reflection tool of the learning process, will allow the student to actively and consciously review and improve his or her own process of learning.

Therefore, the evaluation should help to raise the quality of learning and increase the performance of students, that is why the teacher should select techniques and assessment tools that contribute to ensure the permanent construction of learning.

It is also an instrument that provides feedback to both the teacher and the student, which allows changing aspects related to planning and, especially, the learning process. In a few words, evaluation makes sense when the educational process improves.

In short, a successful evaluation process is largely to the extent that its results are available at the right time, to influence decision making.

1. Introduction

The present essay is based on a documentary inquiry and the author’s own experience which allows corroborating that, when taking the evaluation as a tool for reflection based on the learning process, -where curiosity, desire, search, creativity or analysis are the fundamental axes- will allow the student to get involved in his own learning process and thus the student will be able to see which path should be taken in the future.

The Evaluation is, first and foremost, a reflexive practice of the teacher that is not only limited to the cognitive aspect of the student, but also covers all the aspects involved in the educational process and that has a set of learning evaluation techniques and instruments, It uses to make decisions and improve processes.

In this sense, the reflective procedures that are carried out when an evaluation is taken, involve feedback or feedback processes, where teachers and students consider the processes of appropriation of content, strategies and skills that have been worked on. On one hand, it allows to review whether the methodological strategy used in the teaching process has been correct, relevant, conducive, and adequate or, on the contrary, has not consolidated the expected learning; on the other, it should guide the student and provide enough help to reflect on their own process. The evaluation will only make sense if, from it, the student can actively and consciously review and improve their own learning process.

The evaluation should help to increase the quality of learning and increase student performance, which is why the teacher must select evaluation techniques and instruments that contribute to guarantee the permanent construction of Learning.

In this context, evaluation should be seen as a permanent activity in the classroom, within the teaching-learning process that bases or drives decision-making, so that the decisions that are derived are appropriate.

2. Educative evaluation

Elola and Toranzos (2000) affirm that in any evaluation process the presence of certain components is recognized as: a)the search for clues, either through observation or other means that allow obtaining the information, b)the way of recording and analyzing the information, through a varied set of instruments and analysis techniques, these clues are recorded to carry out the evaluation task, c) the construction ofcriteria, elements from which you can establish the comparison with respect to the object of evaluation or of some characteristics, d)the value judgment, is the central element of any evaluative action and the one that articulates and makes sense of the components defined above and refers to the action of judging, or make value judgments, and e)decision making, an inherent component of the evaluation process and is not always taken into account by decision makers, so that it becomes essential to keep in mind the purpose pursued with the proposed evaluation.

In this context, Tenbrink (2006) states that: “Evaluation is the process of obtaining information and using it to form judgments that in turn will be used in decision making” (p. 22).

The educational evaluation must address the entire system, the action, the educational process and its protagonists. Consequently, it became possible to evaluate aspects such as: student learning, teacher’s strategies, the teaching’s qualities, content selection, class environment, classroom space, different teaching processes and learning, the achievements, difficulties, the link between what has been done and what remains to be done, the adjustment of teacher planning and institutional reality. Therefore, at present, teachers and students evaluate each other within the same process with the ultimate goal of raising the quality of what has been taught and what has been learned.

From this practical, totalizing perspective -it is valid to clarify that the approach on Evaluation is not based on the perspective or method of Ralph W. Tyler, which was focused on the evaluation of results in response to the achievement of previously established objectives-, Not only the progress and results of student learning are evaluated, but the progress of the entire educational process is taken into consideration.

It should be understood that evaluation is an instrument that provides feedback to both the teacher and the student, which allows changing aspects related to planning and, especially, with the learning process. When the teacher plans, he or she does so thinking if the task he proposes will be exploratory or if, instead, it will be a diagnostic evaluation, if it will be to see the evolution or the process of building certain knowledge or if it will be part of the final product of a topic addressed.

3. Learning Evaluation

Various studies (Escobar, 2007; González, 2000; Gil, 2012) agree that the evaluation of learning is a systematic and permanent process that includes the search and obtaining information from various sources about the quality of performance, progress, performance or student achievement and the quality of the processes used by the teacher, the determination of their importance and relevance in accordance with the training objectives that are expected to be achieved, all in order to make decisions that guide the learning and efforts of the teacher management.

Within this framework, the learning-oriented evaluation has as its fundamental purpose the development of a productive learning by the student that also supposes to reinforce the capacities for the self-evaluation and propitiate forms of feedback that assign the student a role in the generation of feedback from of evaluation, thus developing the capacity for self-regulation of learning itself.

When the teacher attends a large number of students, sustainable feedback strategies can be proposed that pass through training students to improve the quality of their own work in a self-regulated way and without necessarily having the teacher, since the feedback could be generated by themselves or by their peers.

Therefore, feedback is an important element for the improvement of student learning, constituting a key factor to enhance the formative nature of the evaluation.

4. Evaluation Techniques

In relation to evaluation techniques, these are a set of actions or procedures that lead to obtaining relevant information about student learning. These can be diverse: written tests, oral tests, process observations, product observations.

In this context, written tests imply the use of pencil and paper as the essay or questionnaire and oral tests such as the exposition of a subject, the answer to conceptual, relationship, elaboration, critical analysis, and other questions which are of a high degree of subjectivity regarding who is fulfilling the role of evaluator.

Likewise, observation is an element that provides fundamental data. The interventions of the students, the group socializations of certain contents, the predispositions towards the observed task, are some examples that will allow us to have a global idea of both the individual and group processes. The information collected should be used to indicate the status of the learning to be evaluated, describe the existing reality and allow the issuance of value judgments. It should be noted that the less strict, in terms of seeking a single response the evaluation is, the greater and better chances of expressing students will have.

According to Camilloni (1998), four fundamental characteristics must be taken into account so that the evaluation tools have the corresponding relevance which are:validity, reliability, practicality and usefulness. It isvalidwhen evaluating according to pre-established criteria, what is intended to be evaluated with it; It isreliablewhen it is accurate enough in terms of measurement but, at the same time, it is sensitive to appreciate the different alternatives that are presented; It ispractical when the time the teacher needed to design, elaborate and put it into practice was less; when the student can understand it without difficulties and when he does not need special materials, equipment and spaces to be able to get into operation. But, in addition, an instrument is practical to the extent that it facilitates analyzing and interpreting its results and allows elaborating, from them, important and functional conclusions for the teaching and learning process. Likewise, theutilitymeasures whether the instrument meets the expectations that the educator intends to achieve when teaching.

Each of these four elements mentioned provides different degrees of relevance to consider whether the evaluation process being carried out is effective and efficient to glimpse certain results.

5. Evaluation Instruments

The evaluation instruments that are often designed refer to a very small number of cognitive competences, often oriented to comprehensive memorization, which neglects an important set of processes and competences involved in learning and that should be subject to evaluation.

According to Elola and Toranzos (2000)

There are many types or classifications of instruments, but beyond the adoption of one or other classification criteria, the main thing is to be able to identify these different tools as complementary to each other and therefore the need to include a certain variety of them in the evaluation task (p.9).

In that sense, Rodríguez and Ibarra (2011, p.71-72) point out that the evaluation instruments are “real and tangible tools used by the person who evaluates to systematize their valuations on the different aspects”. Some examples are: checklists, estimation scales, rubrics, semantic differential scales, decision matrices or even mixed instruments where more than one is mixed.

A fundamental requirement of evaluation instruments is that they must explicitly or implicitly reflect the evaluation criteria and indicators. According to Hamodi, López and López (2015), the most common and most used are presented below.

TheControl list, is useful for collecting information on tasks or processes, for example: to check the delivery of work, results of an action, or compliance with the main parts of a project, among others.

A second instrument is the rating scale orestimation scalethat evaluates the degree or frequency of compliance of an attribute. The attributes represent the item and are accompanied by a set of categories that give it value.

A third widely used assessment instrument is therubric. It is commonly used in the evaluation of students’ performance to specify what is expected from their work, assess it and facilitate feedback.

In that sense, the work that students do can be evaluated by themselves to promote meta-reflective work taking into account a pre-established list of criteria. For the teachers, these are instruments of great power, because they allow them to make known in a precise and forceful way what are the expectations of achievement regarding the task to which their students must aspire, while allowing to demonstrate how They can reach the best levels.

For example, in the Applied Research subject that is currently taught in the 10th semester of the Marketing career, a rubric was designed to evaluate the aspects related to Justification, background, objectives and research questions corresponding to unit 4: Process steps of Scientific Research. Also, in the subject Business Economics, which is taught in the 8th Semester of the same career, an Evaluation Guide for an Essay was prepared, on the actual production processes of the MIPYMES of the department or Municipality of Chontales, addressing the negative effects to the environment and its mitigation. (See Annexes).

Finally, theevaluative argumentis presented. It is an instrument of a more qualitative nature than the ones presented above, with this instrument the evaluator makes an argument valuation for each attribute to be evaluated, through them an overall score of the entire instrument can also be offered.

It is important to note that student participation in the evaluation process is clearly necessary.

6. Conclusions

The purpose of evaluation will always be to improve the pedagogical intervention. Trying to understand the elements involved in the teaching and learning process, will facilitate decision making and the adequacy of teaching interventions, and will allow to verify if they have been significant.

In this sense, the evaluation is a process that implies commitment, complexity - not only the processes that lead to evaluate the contents worked in the classroom through different instruments (exams, tests, practical works, etc.) must be considered, but also those issues related to university activity and even with the educational system itself -, coherence, participation of all those involved, focused on improvement rather than control, more attentive to processes than to products, comprehensive and therefore consistent with individual and group situations. In short, evaluation makes sense when the educational process improves.

bibliography

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Escobar, J. (2007). Evaluación de Aprendizajes. Un asunto vital en la educación superior. Revista Lasallista de Investigación, IV (2), 50-58. Retrieved on August 22nd, 2015 from http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=e7bd0fb5-1a43-4045-b74d-c033dfd3a24f%40sessionmgr112&vid=6&hid=101

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Annexes

FACULTAD REGIONAL MULTIDISCIPLINARIA “CORNELIO SILVA ARGÜELLO”

UNAN – FAREM CHONTALES

a. Rubric for the assessment of Justification, Background, Objectives and Research Questions

Source: Ariel Briceño Moraga (2019)

 

b. Rubric for the Test evaluation

FACULTAD REGIONAL MULTIDISCIPLINARIA “CORNELIO SILVA ARGÜELLO”

UNAN – FAREM CHONTALES

Name: __________________________________________________________

Tittle of the essay: _________________________________________________

Source: René Noé (2015)