DEVELOPING ASSESSMENT PRACTICES THROUGH THE USE OF BLOGS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: AN INNOVATIVE EXPERIENCE IN THE OPEN UNIVERSITY OF CATALONIA

Abstract

Since the apparition of the term Web 2.0, web technologies have evolved into user-centered tools, allowing users to generate their own content and disseminate it trough the web. Blogs have become, in the last years, one of the most known web 2.0 tools and a common form of expression for the users of the Internet; being aware of that, teachers are using blogs as learning and teaching tools. The Bologna process signifies an important change in the education paradigm. The competencies based design and assessment is only one of the aspects have changed, but perhaps one of the most critical. However, are our students aware of its competencies acquisition? Do they actually reflect on their own learning process? For all these reasons, a research group led by the University of Barcelona proposes to carry out the project called “Formative competency based assessment through blogs”. This project consists in the design, implementation and evaluation of a blog-based model for the students’ assessment based on competencies. One of the project’s main aims is to promote the potential of blogs as an assessment space for students in Higher Education. We have implemented the model in six universities and in different faculty degrees: pedagogy, social education, engineering, communication and Catalan literature. We will deep into one of these experiences carried out in the “ICT Competences” course of the Catalan literature program degree of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). In this course, our students must develop a collaborative research project in small groups. Blog is used as a platform for their reflection about the group’s learning process and about their competencies’ acquisition. Four gathering information tools were designed during this research project: two questionnaires (one for the students and another for the teachers), a content analysis template (to analyze each blog\\\\\\\'s content) and a teacher’s feedback analysis template. This paper presents the results based on the questionnaires. We will explain our first findings about the use of the blogs and its benefits and disadvantages as a tool for the students\\\\\\\' reflection about their own learning process in a Higher Education scenario. Finally, we will explain some of the implications for practice in regard to the role of teachers and students during all the competencies assessment process through the use of blogs. In fact, our results suggest some ideas and guidelines about the use of the blogs for the formative competency based assessment.