Interactive methodology improves the learning process for engineering students

Abstract There is a need to properly set the relative scores of the different activities on the final evaluation. The aim of this study was to analyze i) the monitoring and scores of the different activities of continuous assessment proposed in a mandatory course, ii) the type of questions that best evaluate and discriminate the learning process. The activities programmed for the course were 24% on-line and 76% on-site attendant, and within the on-site attendant 25% were performed in groups. No differences were observed both in the attendance or the scores obtained among the different kind of activities (about 63% and 7.7 out of 10, respectively). The scores obtained in the questions related to the activities performed were 2.2 points higher for the students that had done the activities respect to those that had not done them. Analyses of the difficulty and discrimination index were carried out for the items included in the on-line test.