Learning evidences: what they are, types and characteristics

In education, all kinds of content are taught, but this is not a guarantee that students have achieved them. To be able to verify that the students have assimilated them, it is necessary to submit them to exams, have them do work and, also, see if they are interested in the subject and are involved.

There are several evidences of learning that can be studied to know if students are learning, both finding out what exactly they are internalizing as if they are interested in the subject imparted.

Next we will talk about the two main types of evidence of learning, in addition to commenting on some of the most common.

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What is evidence of learning?

The learning evidences are the set of tests that demonstrate the process and result of a learning process implemented with the students. That is, they are those tests that confirm to teachers and others involved in the learning process that their students are learning.

These tests can be of different types and they include the curricular planning, the recording of notes, the sessions, the worksheets, the evaluation instruments ...

Before applying and evaluating the evidence of learning, teachers must determine what they will use to know if their students are learning adequately. The use of this evidence usually has positive effects on the organizational aspect of the educational institution, since greatly facilitates the evaluation of the contents of the curriculum that students are expected to acquire.

However, it must be said that there may be some impediments that make it difficult to use some types of evidence, such as the lack of technologies, problems in data access, lack of time and other aspects such as the organizational attitude of the faculty. Added to this, we can find another difficulty is that the quality of the evidence analyzed is related to the clarity of the question that we want to answer with it.

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Types of learning evidence

The main criterion to differentiate between types of evidence of learning is based on how objective they are and what kind of questions they answer regarding student learning. These evidences can be divided into two, direct and indirect, and in any good academic evaluation both should be used since the first They usually give us objective information that is easier to measure, while the latter offer us more qualitative information, although subjective.

Direct evidence of learning

Direct learning evidence is visible, objective and tangible. It is a type of evidence that shows exactly what students are and are not learning, answering the question "What have you learned?" Direct evidence is all evidence that passes what could be called the "skeptic" test.

For example, a person might be skeptical of the way students learn, having serious doubts with certain types of more subjective evidence such as self-assessments on writing skills carried out by the students themselves.

In contrast, that same skeptical person would be less likely to doubt a writing test taken by a student but evaluated in according to several standard criteria, agreed by consensus by a committee of experts or by the group of professors of the department of tongue.

Direct evidence of learning is often standardized, being easy to evaluate both by the teacher and any other person involved in teaching, in addition to facilitating the development of very objective conclusions. Some of these direct evidence of learning are:

• Archive records
• Behavioral observations
• Skills interviews
• Samples of student work: exams, reports, essays ...
• Mock exams
• Defenses and oral presentations
• Final projects
• Performance evaluations

Indirect evidence of learning

Indirect evidence is those tests in which the student is probably learning, but does not clearly determine what or how much she is learning. This type of evidence serves to answer the question "What do you say you have learned?" and we can highlight the following parameters.

1. Reaction

This parameter is student satisfaction with the learning experience.

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2. Learning

It refers to what they have learned from the learning experience, to what can we get out of their time in the class, course or educational center.

3. Transfer

Transfer refers to use of the content acquired in class applied to other contexts, either in another subject, in your community or in situations outside the educational center.

4. Results

Make reference to how what they have learned has helped the students to achieve their goals.

There are tests that, despite having a certain standardized component, are considered indirect because they are they are based more on what the student says they have learned than on checking to what extent they have learned Really. Among these we find:

• Learning questionnaires
• Interviews on how learning helped them
• Satisfaction surveys
• Reflections
• Focus groups

Learning evidence modalities

We can comment on some modalities of learning evidences that serve to analyze to what extent students are acquiring knowledge and using it both inside and outside of school.

1. Evidence of learning processes

It is a type of evidence that, as its name suggests, has to do with learning processes, also having relation to the time invested in the task that is requested of the student and the learning opportunities.

Like virtually any indirect evidence, this one would not pass the skeptic's test, but it can still provide very valuable information about how learning is taking place.

For example, if we want to assess whether students are learning about mathematics, one piece of evidence would be how much time they stay focused doing the exercises when they are asked to solve some exercises in the training session. class.

Another example of evidence of process-focused learning would be the time and number of times students spend in the library consulting math books, as well as borrowing these books.

The main advantage of this type of evidence is that it can give more clues about why students are or are not learning, in addition to that These evidences can be collected while the teaching process of a certain content or topic has not yet been completed..

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2. Evidence on input factors

This type of evidence is related to the factors that are given before starting an educational program, either because the students had acquired them in previous courses or because they are conditioned by the infrastructure and teaching style of the center.

There are many aspects that may be affecting student learning. Among them we can find the proportion of students and teachers in class, the scholarships offered by the administration, the budget of educational programs, equipment, teacher training, content learned by students in courses previous ...

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3. Evidence on learning contexts

This kind of indirect evidence is related to the environment in which learning takes place. It would fall into this category how motivated the students are, what interests they have about their future, the demands of employers in the area, the needs, offers and demands that exist in the labor market and cultural factors among others.