A trial of a report rubric and peer evaluation in basic physical and analytical chemistry laboratory courses

Abstract

The evaluation of basic physical and analytical chemistry laboratory courses, included report writing and skills and attitude development. A questionnaire investigated attitudes toward the introduction of a report rubric and peer evaluation of pharmacy students. A customer satisfaction analysis of the questionnaire identified the strongest items “clarification of the goal” and “materialization of the task” in support of the report rubric. On the other hand, the items requiring attitude improvement were “improvement in motivation to learn” and “motivation to achieve the goal”. The questionnaire items in support of peer evaluations were “necessity for practice”, “improvement of learning motivation,” and “influence on one’s attitude toward practice”, and there were no items were identified for improvement. These results showed that the report rubric influenced students by clarifying the goal and making the task concrete, while peer evaluations influenced students’ attitudes toward basic pharmacy practice. Therefore, it is deemed necessary to combine both types of evaluations.