An Action Research On Constructing A Multi-Evaluation System Of Students' Learning For Experimental Curricula Of Life Science In Normal Universities

Learning evaluation is an important part in experimental curricula. To establish a scientific and effective learning evaluation system for experimental curricula in life science will promote students' development of their abilities and qualities. Currently, many countries have carried out a series of reforms on evaluation and have developed a variety of learning evaluation models. But the learning evaluation is less concerned in normal universities, especially in the experimental curricula in life science. In this research we propose a multiply learning evaluation for the experimental curricula in life science with the purpose of bettering the instruction, encouragement and development functions of evaluation, and to give the concrete information as reference for the reforms and researches on learning evaluation in normal universities.By referencing the relevant researches, we introduced the requests of normal universities and clarified the general types and characteristics of experimental curricula in life science. We summarized the development, current statue and the basic principles of multi-evaluation and learning evaluation, meanwhile, we also outlined the development, the content, the process and general approaches of action research. On the basic of theoretical researches, we learnt the current statue of the learning evaluation approaches in experimental curricula of School of Life Science in ECNU via questionnaire and interviewing. The results showed that the experimental curricula of our faculty have many disadvantages, such as limited types of evaluators, outdated approaches for evaluation, less characteristics and incomprehensive evaluation system, which need to be improved. Thus, according to the teaching methods and characteristics of our four-leveled experimental curricula (i.e. basic experimental curricula, Investigation experimental curricula, opening experimental curricula and field practice) , we chose a curriculum in each level as representative to construct a corresponding learning evaluation system. The teachers, students, partners act as the evaluation subjects in the new evaluation system. The way in evaluation includes evaluation scales, exercises, spot check and so on. The content of the evaluation covers knowledge and skills, process and approaches, attitudes and viewpoints of value as in three dimensionsAfter having constructed the learning evaluation system, we took the course Biology of the vertebrates as an example and put the system into practice on this course for two times. From the students' response to the first-time practice via questionnaire and interviewing, we found that students welcomed the new learningevaluation system and identified its role in the reform on experiment teaching. Moreover, most of the students tended to be impersonal in self-evaluation and group-evaluation. But we also found in the action research that the spot check brought much burden and pressure on students and teachers, for which we made a series of revisions and improvements to our evaluation system and put it into practice anew.This system links up with the characteristics of curricula and major, and emphasizes particularly on using students' learning attitude and performance involving the learning to evaluate them, by which to encourage students to learn more efficiently and to self-estimate themselves. This new system is characterized by the innovation and practicability in evaluation. The results of our study will be valuable to the reforms on learning evaluation of other subjects and other colleges.The study was an attempt to the multiply learning evaluation in certain aspect. There are still many problems to be solved in practice. Future studies should be conducted in addressing the issues on objectivity of self-evaluation and alternative evaluation and on evaluation efficiency as well.