Monitoring and self-assessment at the university classroom with a Tablet PC

One of the key elements at the European Higher Education Area is the acknowledgement of the need to monitor and measure student activity throughout the learning process. To do this, we conducted a study at University of Extremadura in Merida and developed an application for a Tablet PC in which students record the amount of time devoted to study different subjects and their level of class participation in a course. In each session, the students recorded on the application, the time devoted to study the specific subject outside the classroom since their last lesson, the tasks that they had done, and their class participation. Thus, we obtained a detailed record of the work, inside and outside the classroom, of the 15 students who took part in this study. In this way, we intended to take a continuous assessment approach which is implicit in the learner-centered paradigm. This information enabled the students to analyze their coursework and progress throughout the course, and improve their results in the subject, since they were more involved in their teaching-learning process.