Cómo evaluar la bioquímica que los estudiantes aprenden y no la que memorizan

• Autor(a) principal: Costa, Manuel João
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista de Ensino de Bioquímica
• Texto Completo: http://bioquimica.org.br/revista/ojs/index.php/REB/article/view/288
• topic: innovación docente, enseñanza de bioquímica, evaluación

The assessments and class objectives in many science courses are often misaligned. Assessing the biochemistry that students learn beyond quick and short-life memorization demands more than asking for the recognition of class examples or materials (such tests have been designated ‘‘retention tests’’). It requires testing how well the student can interpret new scenarios using the learning amassed from other examples/exercises in-clas as well as out of autonomous study. Testing beyond ‘‘rote learning’’ requires ‘‘context-rich’’ questions. A context is a scenario which the student has not met before—in medical disciplines, a context could be for example, the story of a new patient case. For a long time, before the era of information communication technologies, instructors were limited to a small number of still book and paper materials to teach and to prepare test questions. Therefore, teaching would be based on a small number of examples, which would likely be repeated in the assessments. Current freely available resources are extraordinary tools for generating scenarios to be displayed on questions to test students’ knowledge about biochemistry. The scenarios should also be used for formative purposes. Resources deployed on the web are ideal to provide opportunities for students to practice and learn independently. The term ‘‘programmatic assessment’’ has been used to designate programs that use summative tests and formative exercises to maximize learning—the so called ‘‘assessment for learning’’. Once assessments are constructed routinely with scenarios that students have not encountered before, students will realize that there is actually a need to understand their biochemistry, and then the odds are that they will learn deeper. This presentation will explore the principles underlying the design of "context-rich" questions and how such principles can feasibly be turned into practice.