Assessing evaluation: Why student engages or resists to active learning?

This research shows, on a wide dataset of students, that evaluation methods to promote active learning improve students’ academic success and performance. On a database of 4622 engineering and design students, we demonstrate that this result holds when correcting the selection bias—more engaged students opt for active learning. The intriguing result is that the percentage of students that opt for active learning decreases along time. The discussion points to the role of faculty as crucial to decrease the resistance of students to active learning. The general methodological approach in this paper may be useful to assess the performance of any change in a subject’s evaluation.

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Notes

Every student enrolled in an introductory Management subject in first year of the engineering and design degrees at the School of Engineering and Architecture of Zaragoza (Spain).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Escuela de Ingeniería y Arquitectura, Universidad de Zaragoza, Campus Rio Ebro, 50018, Saragossa, Spain María J. Alonso-Nuez, Ana I. Gil-Lacruz & Jorge Rosell-Martínez

1. María J. Alonso-Nuez