Development and application of scoring rubrics for evaluating students’ competencies and learning outcomes in Chemical Engineering experimental courses

Abstract

This paper reflects on the interest of several teachers in reviewing the instruments and evaluation processes in Chemical Engineering experimental courses taught during three consecutive academic years at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid: Engineering Laboratory, Experimentation in Chemical Engineering and Process Scale-up.In this study, a methodology has been proposed to design, develop, and apply rubrics based on competence and learning outcome approaches. Thanks to the collaborative work of the three teaching teams involved, the application of comprehensive rubrics to provide gradual attainment of competence and formative evaluation over the academic years was rendered possible.Rubrics were developed to evaluate the main tasks of the courses: Personal Work, Written Report, and Oral Presentation. The rubric for each task contained the same evaluation criteria and dimensions with four levels of achievement, but differed in the scoring strategy depending on the course in which the rubric was implemented.The use of evaluation rubrics had a low impact on the final students’ grade; its greatest impact was on Personal Work, as a larger number of students achieved higher scores. The rubrics fostered transparency in the evaluation process of the students and homogenized the evaluation criteria for a large number of teachers (22) and students (180 per year).