In Search of an Efficient Assessment Method for Laboratory Activities

There is a consensus in academia about the importance of laboratory activities in the learning process. At all levels of education, learning by doing is vitally important for obtaining the necessary technical skills expected. There is less agreement on how to assess the student’s performance and the skills developed in these tasks. Thus, this paper deals with the importance of assessing laboratory work and the best way to do it. To this purpose, an experience carried out in a physics subject is shared. This has the peculiar characteristic of having many students every academic year (around 300) performing experiments in the laboratory. The analysis is done following documented methodologies, and a corresponding and correct quantitative assessment can be determined for each student at the end of the subject.