Effective Online Assessment and Evaluation though Online Laboratory Submission

Abstract— This paper aims to explain the effective use of Google Classroom for online submission of laboratory work. The practical knowledge is one of the main graduate attributes and is efficiently achieved through the laboratory work. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize on the improvement in the quality of the laboratory work through online submission of the lab work by the students and the effective and transparent implementation of the lab rubrics by the lab course teacher. Also a study of comparison of two different classes one with the online lab submission and the other with traditional approach on the basis of grades and originality in the lab work submitted is also discussed, along with a few more advantages.

Index Terms— Laboratory assessment tool, effective online assessment, technology enhanced learning, google classroom.

The laboratory learning is an important part of the curriculum and helps the students to gain practical knowledge. “Learning through doing” is the main idea behind having a lab course. The lab course is an integral part of the teaching learning process especially, in technical education. The lab course helps to understand the concept in better way and moreover also allows them to explore their idea individually. In a theory class discussing a design problem is always done. But, the issues related to implementation and the loop holes in the design can only effectively found after implementing it in the lab. Hence, the effectiveness of the lab course is very evident, and therefore it is necessary to take appropriate measures to ensure that the objective behind conducting a lab course is achieved and the learning process should be such that every induvial student efforts taken and contribution should be significantly visible. This will in turn result in an effective and more transparent assessment.

The traditional process of submitting ones laboratory work is through a lab journal or lab record book, and the assessment would mainly depend on the quality of the hardcopy of lab work submitted later and on timely submission. So, the main loop hole in this system was that, the lab work would be submitted at a later day and thus gave the students a chance to copy from his peers if the problem statement was same or take the help of some peer instead of taking efforts during the actual lab time. Thus, the actual understanding of the students could not be concluded through the grades they had received.

Also, keeping a track of number of times a particular work was resubmitted due to modification or corrections was difficult or not possible in the above mentioned approach.

To remove the above mentioned hurdles and to enhance the process of evaluation a technique wherein the students submit the lab work during the lab course in a google classroom and the relative work that includes some calculation, justification or post lab question a little later was adopted.

The first task for teacher is to create an online workbook for students to submit their work. In this paper we have used Google Classroom as a tool for the students to submit their work. The Google classroom has the features that allows the teacher to share resources with the students, create common assignments, accepts individual file upload for the same assignment and individual grading, moreover it also allows the teacher and student to post to which all of the members of the classroom can reply to. A one more added advantage of this tool was that a peer teacher could also be added to the same classroom.

A. Creation, submission and assessment through google classroom

Google Classroom is one of the applications, wherein anyone with a google account can open a google classroom. After creation of the google classroom the students can be invited to join the classroom through e-mail or buy sharing the class code (as shown in the fig1). The lab manual with general instruction and lab write-ups for each lab can be uploaded in the google classroom for reference of the students.

For submission of each laboratory work, two assignments were created and were denoted as part 1 and part 2. Students were instructed to submit the part 1 by the end of the lab, and this was ensured by assigning the deadline to the assignment through one of the features of Google classroom. The part 1 included observations and outputs. The part 2 of the assignment had to be submitted within a stipulated time and it included the relative literature such as calculations, graphs, conclusions drawn, or post lab questions.

The teacher could asses the lab work anytime as it was always available on the cloud. The documents uploaded by the students came also had a time stamp which helped the teacher to effectively implement the timely submission rubric efficiently. The teacher could also inform the students to rework on the assignment by returning a lower grade and the student could also resubmit the same, with everything getting record through the google classroom.

The timely assessment from the teachers side was also recorded which helped in quantifying the term continuous assessment used in the lab work assessment.

At, the end of the course collated information of the students work and grade was available and it could be extracted in a downloadable excel sheet.

B. Comparison of Online lab work submission in contract to the traditional approach

1. 1. Effective induvial submission:

Since, the individual had to submit the first part of his lab by the end of the laboratory there was very little scope for the student to copy others work. Moreover, in case of software simulation labs every induvial student was told to take unique variable associate to his unique roll-no and in case of hardware labs the handwritten observations and outputs noted were to be uploaded.

1. 1. Ease of assessment and implementation of rubrics:

The lab course for which we implemented this approach had a weightage of 25.

The Table below gives detailed rubrics used:

Sr. No Topic Marks

1. 1. 1. Timely Submission
      2. Performance
      3. Understanding the concept
      4. Correctness of the document
      5. Conclusion and Post lab question

Table1: Lab rubrics for assessment of lab work

The assessment through these rubrics became more effective through the google classroom as the data related to all the criteria in the table mentioned above was always available in the Google classroom. Also, the assessment using this tool became more transparent.

1. 1. Effective Continuous assessment of the lab work

Since, the return of grades by the lab teacher also was associated with the time stamp the teacher was also obliged to complete timely assessment. Thus it ensured that the final grade reflected due to continuous teaching and learning efforts taken from both the sides.

1. 1. Improvement in the quality of the Lab:

Since, the observation and results of the lab are available in a more systematic way improving the quality of the lab while conducting the same course next time becomes easy.

1. 1. Generation of resource materials of students:

After the final grading the results, observations, and conclusions of the lab can be shared amongst all the students which can be accessed by the students anytime for reference.

1. 1. Punctuality and attendance of the students:

As, a teacher we also try to improve overall personality of the student and take measures to do so. In, this case since the work done had to be submitted during the lab course hours allotted, it was also observed that the students use to turn up on time and there was no need to maintain an attendance record register as their attendance was considered through their submission.

1. 1. Conducting quizzes for better understanding:

The google form was also explored to find the understanding of student trough lab related quizzes.

1. 1. Go Green:

The paper less approach also helped in reducing the paper waste and promoting go green with all the above mentioned advantages.

C. Results and course feedback

1. 1. Improvement in overall understanding of the students:

The understanding of students was quantified on the basis of improvement in the grades in individual lab.

1. 1. Lab course feedback :

A lab course feedback was taken from the students through google forms. Fifty four numbers of students had participated in the feedback. The two Pie graphs fig. and fig. depict the positive feedback given by the students on submission of online laboratory work submission.

The following were the questions posted to students on lab work submission:

1. 1. Improvement in Course outcome mapped through Lab work:

Since, there is an improvement in the performance of the students it will also be reflected as an increase in achievement of overall course outcome.

The course outcome mapped through laboratory work for a course conducted in 2016-17 and 2017-18 is considered to prove the same. The bar chart below gives a comparison of the same.

The paper thus puts forth an idea of submitting the laboratory work of the students online and discusses the improvement in the overall teaching learning process. The enhancement from the teacher as well the learner is evident through the various feedback and analysis done on the same. It is also observed that the there is an enhancement in the outcomes of the course due to the approach discussed in the paper.