Education Research Frontier June 2016, Volume 6, Issue 2, PP.64-68
The Assessment Mode Reform of Professional Elective Course and Its Effect Analysis Guo-feng ZOU, Gui-xia FU College of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255049 China Email: zgf841122@163.com
Abstract This paper is an exploration of assessment mode for elective courses of electronic and information engineering. Firstly, these problems of traditional assessment method of professional elective courses are analyzed; and then a novel assessment method is proposed. In this method, the final examination of professional elective course is divided into the students’ autonomous assessment and the final closed book examination. The autonomous assessment is a new assessment content, which more focuses on the training of the students’ ability and the comprehensive quality. After reform, the proportion of closed book exam is greatly reduced, which also reduces the students’ test pressure, and eliminates the teachers’ confusion. It is a more successful reform. Keywords: Autonomous Assessment; Reform of Assessment Mode; Professional Elective Courses
1 INTRODUCTION In 2012, the document about “several opinions on improving the quality of higher education” was published by the China’s Ministry of Education. To improve the quality of higher education, all-round reforms in education must be comprehensively deepened; the talent training scheme and course system must be gradually improved and updated; and talent cultivation mode must be continuously innovative [1]. Nowadays, the talent cultivation mode has mainly transformed from imparting knowledge to the combination of imparting knowledge, cultivating ability and improving quality [2, 3, 4]. Therefore, the transformation of talent cultivation idea for higher education will cause the reform of assessment method. In the author’s school, according to the requirement of the talent cultivation plan, the professional courses of electronic and information engineering are divided into professional compulsory courses ( such as high frequency electronic technology, the principle and application of DSP, etc.) and professional elective courses (such as computer networks,, basis of IOT, etc.). The teaching hours and depth of course content for professional elective courses are limited obviously. In the teaching process, the students do not pay enough attention; and the effect of classroom observations is not as good as we expect. Finally, the professional compulsory courses and the professional elective courses all use the closed-book exam evaluation mode. As the students do not firm grasp knowledge of professional elective courses, they often cram for exams, or even cheat in the examination. In order to avoid the spread of this problem, it is very necessary to explore the suitable ways of assessment for the professional elective courses.
2 TEACHERS’ CONFUSION AND STUDENTS’ CONFUSION By researching the assessment way of professional elective courses, we find that the traditional examination way brought much different confusion to teachers and students. (1) Teachers’ confusion: After the lecture, it is very difficult for the teachers to understand the students’ mastery of the course content, which causes much confusion when teachers set a question paper. Although teachers often ask questions in class and set up homework after class, but there still are many uncontrollable factors, such as copying homework masked their short board. These uncontrollable factors combined with the effects of classroom observations are not good, which makes the teacher not really know the degree of knowledge mastery of students. In this case, if the students are assessed, it is inevitable that the examination cannot really test the teachers’ teaching - 64 www.erfrontier.org
effect and students’ learning effect. (2) Students’ confusion: Because many professional compulsory courses and subject basic courses are the examination or reexamination subjects in postgraduate entrance examination, even that is the basic requirement in some specific industries. Therefore, students often pay more attention to these courses, and they learn them more seriously. Besides, they are willing to participate in the corresponding practice and training. However, for the professional elective courses, the degree of students’ attention decreased significantly, absenteeism rate is higher, the learning effect is not ideal. Through the author’s investigation, we find that about 70% of the students take notes in the digital signal processing (DSP) class, which is considered as a compulsory course. However, for some elective courses, such as “Computer network”, the proportion of taking notes drops to less than 20%. Therefore, the two completely different learning attitudes lead to different learning effect. In the final examination, these two kinds of courses are test in the same assessment way. Students will be confused about the professional elective courses, because they are worried about the exam. In this state of confusion, it is easy to produce negative mentality, even to generate the idea of cheating in the exam. These two kinds of psychological confusion make the examination of professional elective courses become very awkward and lose the original real value. For that reason, the author improves the assessment method of “computer networks” [5, 6] (professional elective course) in two different classes. The author divides the final exam into two phases: Testing the student using the “four autonomous assessment method” in the first phase; and then students will participate in the normal closed-book exam. The final assessment scores are decided by these two assessments. Next, the article will focus on the "four autonomous assessment method".
3 FOUR AUTONOMOUS ASSESSMENT METHOD The whole idea of four autonomous assessment method: After teaching, students are divided into some different groups autonomously; and each group organizes the discussion and analysis about the content, key and difficult points of the course independently. Then, they hand in an analysis report collected by themselves, that is, a diagram of course skeleton. Finally, the team members should make a self-test paper and provide answers. These materials are eventually submitted to the teacher. The teacher gives the corresponding score for the autonomous assessment according to the group discussion, analysis report and self-test paper. This score is 40% of the total score of the final exam. The close-book examination score is 60%. In this way, the final score of the students is as follows: Usual score （15%）
Final total score
Experiment score
（100%）
（20%）
Final score （65%）
Autonomous assessment scores （40%）
Closed-book exam score （60%）
FIG.1 THE COMPOSITION OF STUDENTS’ SCORES
The detailed introduction of four autonomous examination method (1) Organizing and grouping independently. Students independently form the discussion group according to the number of students (each group includes 8 individuals) or one dormitory as a group (each group includes 6 individuals). The team leader for each group is responsible for organizing the discussion and summarizing the results. Independent discussion can be completed after class. It can generally be limited within one or two weeks after the end of the lecture. Students choose the specific location and time, and then inform the teacher. The teacher can choose some groups randomly to audit. In this way, the teacher can supervise and guide the students. The - 65 www.erfrontier.org
independent group mode can exercise the students’ spirit of solidarity cooperation and sense of group honor, which can fully mobilize their enthusiasm and interest of independent learning simultaneously. (2) Clarifying skeleton of the course and identifying the key, difficult points independently. In the traditional teaching process, the teacher often summarizes whole skeleton of the course, and teaches all key and difficult points to students. The only thing that student need to do is to listen and remember passively. On this occasion, students may be unable to grasp the emphases, and they cannot understand it in depth. However, when students organize, discuss and analyze by themselves, they can really understand the knowledge. Students can sum up a skeleton of the course, which truly belong to themselves. This mode not only deepens students’ understanding for the course content and knowledge, but also trains their ability of learning and summarizing independently. (3) Making a self-test paper independently. After discussion and interflow within the group, students have known the emphases on the whole. On this basis, the teacher can ask students to make a self-test paper independently and give the answers. This test paper generally combines the diagram of course structure with the key and difficult points. By this way, students can further understand the testing point after understanding the key and difficult points. In this section, it can enhance the students’ confidence in the course content, and overcome the fear of examination, but also enhance the students' sense of ownership. (4) Be responsible for their own and team members’ scores independently. In order to improve the enthusiasm of students and encourage them to participate in the independent assessment, meanwhile in order to ensure the quality of students’ discussion, analysis report and self-test paper, the teacher will give scores to each of the team. This score will account for 40% of the final examination results. Therefore, students must be responsible for their own scores, and be responsible for the other team members.
4 THE EFFECT OF FOUR AUTONOMOUS ASSESSMENT METHOD After the reform, through the reflection of students and actual measurement, the degree of knowledge mastery or practical application ability have been greatly improved, so the four autonomous assessment method is a successful teaching reforms. Table 1 gives a comparison of the average scores of six groups in the whole class. Table 2 gives a comparison of the scores of all the members in the fifth group. TABLE 1 THE COMPARISON OF THE AVERAGE SCORES OF SIX GROUPS Scores Teams Team 1 Team 2 Team 3 Team 4 Team 5 Team 6
Usual score (15%) 90 90 86 88 85 80
Experiment score (20%) 90 95 80 94 80 78
Autonomous assessment scores Discussion Analysis report Self-test paper Score (10%) score (10%) score (6%) 80 88 85 85 88 87 82 85 82 85 86 85 80 77 75 77 80 75
Closed-book exam score (39%) 89 91 79 84 74 70
Final total score (100%) 88.11 90.51 81.33 86.96 77.81 75.10
TABLE 2 THE COMPARISON OF THE SCORES OF ALL THE MEMBERS IN THE FIFTH GROUP Scores Members A B C D E F
Usual score (15%) 95 90 88 80 83 74
Experiment score (20%) 90 90 80 75 75 70
Autonomous assessment scores Discussion Analysis report Self-test paper Score (10%) score (10%) score (6%) 80 77 75 85 77 75 82 77 75 79 77 75 77 77 75 77 77 75
Closed-book exam score (39%) 81 86 80 68 71 58
Final total score (100%) 84.04 85.74 80.80 73.62 75.04 67.62
In addition, the assessment methods to join autonomous assessment effectively drop the confusion of teachers and students. Dropping teachers’ confusion: By listening and observing student’s discussion, looking over student’s analysis - 66 www.erfrontier.org
reports and the test paper, the teacher can know more about the students’ mastery of knowledge. It can help the teachers to know how difficult the test paper is suitable, and it also enhance the pertinence to the final exam, so it can drop teachers’ confusion effectively. Dropping students’ confusion: After adding independent exam score to final exam grade, the closed book exam score accounts for only 39% of student's final grade. It can relieve students’ burden and pressure, and avoid the students’ confusion. More importantly, this method can effectively inhibit the generation of students’ cheating. The autonomous assessment transforms the passive exam to active learning, which will help students to master the emphases more firm, and exercise ability in many aspects. Besides, the assessment division of professional compulsory courses and elective courses is obvious. The autonomous assessment improves the students’ interest in learning effectively; it also improves the students’ study effect and drops students’ confusion. The four autonomous assessment method does not pay attention to the students’ knowledge mastery, but more importantly, the students enhance their comprehensive ability, analysis ability and the ability of autonomous learning through autonomous assessment. This is consistent with the goal of "application-oriented talents, inter-disciplinary talents, and technical talents training"
5 IMPROVEMENTS IN THE FUTURE (1) The four autonomous assessment method is still in the initial stage, and it has not formed relatively reasonable unified specification. (2) How to allocate the proportion of autonomous assessment score and closed book exam score? (3) The autonomous assessment way is mainly designed to overcome the teachers’ and students’ psychological confusion, now it still lacks of the appraisal of students' comprehensive skills. The author will continue to study the teaching and assessment mode of the professional elective course. By constantly sum up experience, the assessment mode can be improved.
6 CONCLUSION The assessment reform of professional elective courses for electronic and information engineering will not form overnight. It needs to change the concept of education, the teacher needs to put more energy, and students need to actively participate in and cooperate with each other. Only by working together to design a reasonable teaching assessment method, the comprehensive quality of students are improved and more high-quality inter-disciplinary talents are cultivated for the society.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT This paper is supported by the Teaching research project in Shandong Province (No.2012259).
REFERENCES [1]
Ge Bing, Liu Zhiming, Mao Liang. Exploration on the reform of examination mode in Colleges [J] Education Exploration. 2014.8:15-16.
[2]
Li Guojia, Yang Xiliang, Li Xiuqin. Exploration of diversified teaching and assessment mode of computer network course [J] Computer Education.2015, 15:89-92..
[3]
Bao Liping, Zhou Lijuan. Reflection on the Reform f Examination Approaches in Universities [J] Journal of Hangzhou Dianzi University (Social science). 2005, 1(1):59-62.
[4]
Xu Yaqin, Bai Jingwen, Wang Libo. The reform of the examination in organic chemistry [J]. Journal of Science of Teachers’ College and University.2013,5:118-120.
[5]
Xie xiren. Computer Networks[M], Beijing, Publishing House of Electronics Industry,2013.6.
[6]
Wang xinliang. Computer Networks[M], Beijing, Publishing House of Machinery Industry,2014.9.
- 67 www.erfrontier.org
Authors Zou Guofeng(1984-), Male , Born in Tai'an City, Shandong Province, China. Graduated in 2013s from College of Automation, Harbin Engineering University, China, with a
Ph.D
in
Pattern
Recognition
and
Technology. Address: No.12 Zhang Zhou Road Zhangdian District of Zibo City, Shandong Province,China. Emial: zgf841122@163.com
Intelligent System. The main research
Fu Guixia(1985-), Female , Born in Weifang City, Shandong
directions
recognition,
Province, China. Graduated in 2014s from College of
multimedia communications, computer networks, digital image
Automation, Harbin Engineering University, China, with a Ph.D
processing, etc. Work Experience: He was an assistant
in Pattern Recognition and Intelligent System. The main
researcher in Shandong Academy of Sciences from July 2013 to
research direction is intelligent robots, computer networks,
August 2014. Now, he is a lecturer in Shandong University of
computer software technology, etc.
for
pattern
- 68 www.erfrontier.org