(926) THE USE OF RUBRICS AS A TOOL FOR EVALUATION OF BIOCHEMISTRY AND FOOD BIOTECHNOLOGY LABORATORY PRACTICES FOR THE DEGREE IN FOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

摘要

The adaptation to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) assumes a methodological renewal ofteaching at Spanish Universities. The new pedagogical model changes radically the student-teacherand student-student interactions giving more importance to active and collaborative learning. Thismodel demands reliable assessment tools to evaluate the student's attainment of the relevantcurricular objectives and provide them with meaningful feedback. Regarding formative evaluation,rubrics are being used throughout Universities as an excellent option that provide means ofestablishing the evaluation standards to be used for student grading in specific formative activities.The present communication relates to an experience developed for two different academic subjects,namely Biochemistry and Food Biotechnology, of the degree in Food Science and Technology, as partof the activities of the Biology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology Innovation Group (Grupo deInnovacion Docente en Biologia, Bioquimica y Biotecnologia, GID-BBT) of the Faculty of Science ofthe University of Burgos. The formative activity implied in both subjects the evaluation of laboratorypractices using rubrics throughout the academic year 2013-2014. The subject “Biochemistry” wasimparted in the first course having 78 students enrolled, and the subject “Food Biotechnology” countedon 34 students of the third course of the degree. The study involved the design of rubrics for theevaluation of the laboratory practices, presentation of its contents to the students and, once theformative activity was finished, collection of the student's impressions by means of satisfactionsurveys. The descriptive and quantitative analysis of the resulting data was performed using the SPSSv.20.0 software fixing the p-value ≤ 0.05. Results indicated that globally, the students valued as verysatisfactory or satisfactory the formative action, independently of the subject analyzed, as theyconsidered positively the use of rubrics as a helpful tool for the development and establishment ofevaluating criteria for the laboratory practices. Specific differences in the responses to the items of thesurvey between the first course and third course students are analyzed in detail in the presentcommunication, in order to improve the rubric-based evaluations and/or the methodology of theformative activity for future courses.