Педагогические науки/3. Методические основы воспитательного про­цесса

Lakiychuk Olga

National technical university of Ukraine “KPI”

The use of a score-rating system in a higher educational institution

The use of a score-rating system is common in higher educational institutions in many developed countries in the world that allows for a complex account of the achievement of every student, both in individual subjects, and as a whole, compared to other students. The reasons for the transition to the score-rating system in Ukrainian universities is not only the unification of assessment systems within the framework of the accession of Ukraine to the Bologna process and the transition to a undergraduate system, but also the need to improve the educational process.

However, in the process of introducing elements of score-rating system, some aspects related to the regulation of the learning process, can have a demotivating effect on the students. A number of these issues need to be considered during the transition of the universities to a score-rating system.

First of all, problems arise in connection with a fixed number of points that a student can get in the discipline. Limitation of points leads to the fact that students tend to gain a fixed amount necessary to obtain the desired result, and then stop working, yielding a set of points to other students. Overall performance in the group at the same time is likely to rise, but the qualities of students’ works, as well as the development of their commitment to the initiative, competence, and competitiveness are affected very negatively.

An alternative to this approach is a system in which a set of scores for each subject studied is unlimited, and 100 points is taken for the best result achieved by the best student for doing his or her best in the discipline, but not less than a certain score set by the department or a teacher. This scoring system encourages students to be more active in practical classes. The logic of this system is based on the fact that if a student is interested in a good evaluation, he is forced to constantly participate in classroom work and has a motivation for further learning and research work.

Also in the process of applying the score-rating system, the teacher may face the problem of the negative impact of the total mass of students on a student leading the rating. This happens in the case where the gap between the student who received the maximum number of points, and the bulk of students is significant. However, this problem can occur in the system, focused on a fixed number of points, as well as in the system which is performance-oriented. In this case, the bulk of the students can have a psychological pressure on the rating leader, leading him to a less active actions so that other students could score extra points, and a similar situation occurs, usually at the end of the semester shortly before the scoring week. The likelihood of such a situation, of course, depends not only on the principles of the a score-rating system, but also on the moral and ethical situation prevailing in the group. Nevertheless providing students with additional opportunities to score the rating due to additional educational or research activities can largely mitigate the situation and motivate students not to press the leader, but apply personal efforts to recruit points.

In some cases, when introducing the elements of the score-rating system, teachers need to give a perfect score provided on any kind of activity for 100% solution or the maximum number of reports provided by the program objectives. However, this system does not allow evaluation to assess the real work of the student. This is due to the fact that a large mass of students are not engaged in independent problem solving in practical classes, preferring to copy the already solved problems from classmates. Thus, students have the opportunity to earn points without actually working, which provides both inequitable distribution of ratings and discourages students to work independently. In this regard, for a more adequate system of evaluation of real knowledge of the student, earning points for individually done work is more applicable. Such a work may be solution of the problem at the blackboard, the solution of the problem by the student who responds most quickly at the board, the first correct solution proposed by a student without the use of the board. In these cases, students are directly interested in solving the problem personally and copying ready-made solutions largely loses its value to increase the rating.

A significant problem is the lack of opportunities and rapid changes in teacher’s use of the educational technologies in the process of reading the course. Successful teaching activities is largely due to a creative approach to teaching discipline and constant updating of tools used to monitor students' knowledge, and therefore requires constant updating of methods of control and homework. In some cases, students may also offer some options for classroom or homework to find or develop an interesting case (or learn online) business scenario of the game, which can be an additional factor stimulating the students' interest in learning and independent search and analysis of new information. Accordingly, if a certain type of work does not allow students to reveal their abilities during the course of development, it must be replaced by a more efficient type of work.

In this case, the previously used teacher assignments may not be appropriate for the following groups, taking into account that the answers or solutions may have already been posted on the Internet. And if this is done, for example in closed groups or blogs, the teacher is not able to detect information leaks and inefficiency of the used tasks. In addition, the extensive use of mobile communications with Internet access at tests by the students allows copying and solving test tasks outside the class. The only criterion that allows the teacher to judge the alleged leak of correct answers to the tasks can be too uniform set of high-scoring students for the task. In this regard, the teacher, upon detection of a leak, should be able to cancel the results of examinations, tests, homework assignments for a further replacement of the tasks. This possibility will quickly adjust the learning process during the course, adding or removing, in consultation with the department, certain types of work.