ONLINE LEARNING ACTIVITIES FOR AUTHENTIC EVALUATION
Lucas A. Pérez Martín
University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
The distinct educational environment of online teaching requires diverse learning and evaluation methods to achieve significant learning. An essential element of online teaching involves students engaging in professional learning activities after studying the material, followed by authentic evaluation by the lecturer.
Therefore, we must provide students with practical applications of the material they have already studied theoretically through learning activities that demonstrate both, to the students and to us, that they have achieved significant learning about the subject and can apply this knowledge in their professional futures. We need to reflect on which of our methodologies enhance the student’s autonomous work and which do not. We cannot be the same lecturers using the same methods in both face-to-face and online teaching. It does not make sense for the activities to be simple formulas to check acquired knowledge, something that can be accomplished with review questions of the theoretical topics, or summaries of the syllabus content. The activities must be aimed at achieving the general and specific competencies of the subject, especially those of a practical and professional nature. On one hand, the activities must ensure that the student demonstrates their theoretical knowledge, and on the other, their ability to apply it to solve real problems related to the exercise of a future professional activity in the field. When focused in this way, the activities can be significant in learning. They should aim to solve a future problem, analyse the practical application of the theory, anticipate some future event, or comment on a complex case that has already been resolved. These are just some examples of potential activities. Lecturers in this online teaching must be very creative in designing new types of activities.
To achieve this objective, the activity must start from what the student already knows and be truly clear in its requirements, task organization, and the explanation of the diverse didactic strategies and resources used. The activity should allow and encourage the use of external resources, be creative, and provoke meaningful thinking. They should be challenging but achievable if the curriculum is well-studied and based on the resources provided to students.
Regarding its relationship with the content, it should focus on relevant content important for the subject. It must also have progressive complexity, meaning that in our corrections, we should be more flexible with the initial activities and more demanding with the final ones. The objectives, both general and specific, must be enumerated with definitive, clear, evaluable, and verifiable verbs. For example: select sources of information to support the solution; analyse possible different scenarios; propose solutions to the presented issues, etc. The activity must also explain the resources and materials required for its resolution, such as theories, statistics, data, programs, tools, and materials like manuals, articles, dictionaries, and any other necessary elements (Sangrá, A., 2020).
Regarding authentic evaluation, it must be based on several aspects, including knowledge and the resolution process, which must already be valued, and the achievement of progressive objectives. It must be an authentic and meaningful assessment with significant importance given to the rubric, which will be discussed further. The evaluation criteria must clearly define what must be known and how to demonstrate it. The activity must clearly indicate whether the ability to identify relevant sources of information, present a clear text or explained solution, develop a theory, or any other action must be demonstrated. Grading criteria should transparently indicate the score or percentage assigned to each action or achievement. It must be clearly specified how a given work will be evaluated and under what conditions. It is very appropriate to establish a complement to the numerical criterion that explains which aspects will lead to the achievement of the proposed objective or not. Even a rubric that establishes what constitutes poor performance, average performance, satisfactory performance, and excellent performance (Centurión, C. I., Lara Martínez, M., & Román Ramos, C., 2021).
The correction of practical exercises with significant information will translate the acquisition of useful knowledge into practice, thereby achieving authentic evaluation. This value of responding to the structure of learning itself and the method of achieving knowledge acquisition is the way to achieve authentic evaluation. For this, we must consider that evaluating is not merely measuring. Measuring is just assigning a numerical value to a specific human activity, while evaluating involves making a value judgment about the substance of the process and result. This evaluation must be comprehensive, continuous, and systematic, allowing the evaluated to participate, provide feedback, and reformulate their solutions after understanding the feedback from the evaluator. In online teaching, it is even more important to evaluate the final result according to the entire process development, which will help us better understand the comprehensive scope of the student’s activity. It is particularly important to assess the time dedicated to the activity, the partial progress made, and to be flexible depending on the difficulty of the tasks the student has tackled. In general, the evaluation may differ at the beginning of the course compared to decisive moments, depending on the information the student has already received (García Cabrero, B., & Pineda Ortega, V., 2011).
