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

Abstract

The adaptation to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) assumes a methodological renewal of teaching at Spanish Universities. The new pedagogical model changes radically the student-teacher and student-student interactions giving more importance to active and collaborative learning. This model demands reliable assessment tools to evaluate the student's attainment of the relevant curricular objectives and provide them with meaningful feedback. Regarding formative evaluation, rubrics are being used throughout Universities as an excellent option that provide means of establishing 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 part of the activities of the Biology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology Innovation Group (Grupo de Innovacion Docente en Biologca, Bioquimica y Biotecnologca, GID-BBT) of the Faculty of Science of the University of Burgos. The formative activity implied in both subjects the evaluation of laboratory practices using rubrics throughout the academic year 2013-2014. The subject "Biochemistry" was imparted in the first course having 78 students enrolled, and the subject "Food Biotechnology" counted on 34 students of the third course of the degree. The study involved the design of rubrics for the evaluation of the laboratory practices, presentation of its contents to the students and, once the formative activity was finished, collection of the student's impressions by means of satisfaction surveys. The descriptive and quantitative analysis of the resulting data was performed using the SPSS v. 20.0 software fixing the p-value <= 0.05. Results indicated that globally, the students valued as very satisfactory or satisfactory the formative action, independently of the subject analyzed, as they considered positively the use of rubrics as a helpful tool for the development and establishment of evaluating criteria for the laboratory practices. Specific differences in the responses to the items of the survey between the first course and third course students are analyzed in detail in the present communication, in order to improve the rubric-based evaluations and/or the methodology of the formative activity for future courses.