Challenges of Learning Life and Earth Sciences in College: Analysis of Causes and Improvement Strategies

Assessment plays a major role in the teaching-learning process, as it enables us to measure the degree of learning acquisition and to check whether teaching has led to the realization of a conceptual change in learners. Today, the world is aware that the time has come to improve the assessment process in order to adapt it to the new demands of digitalization. The aim of our work was to verify the impact of digitization, through a hybrid assessment in a collaborative setting, on students' learning and on the achievement of a conceptual change in them. To this end, a learning situation was proposed to a class of first-year experimental science baccalaureate students, in the SVT subject area, concerning the chapter on “The absorption of water and mineral salts by chlorophyll plants”. After the students had benefited from a well-structured lesson, in line with the official teaching instructions and the SVT curriculum, a formative assessment was offered to them in class, in order to check the degree of acquisition of the scientific concepts of the lesson taught. The results showed a number of gaps in the students' knowledge, leading us to conclude that the proposed learning did not result in conceptual change for a large category of the sample we worked with. To remedy the situation, students were asked to produce asynchronous videos summarizing the course they had received, in groups of three to four students; and to hand in the work a week before the summative assessment carried out in class. Half of the grade was devoted to the video, while the other half to the written assessment. This is why we call it a hybrid assessment. The results showed a considerable improvement in the students' understanding compared to the formative assessment, which was reflected in the quality of their answers. A considerable percentage no longer relied on misconceptions. This led us to conclude that collaborative work and the use of new technology are tools that can foster learning conditions and lead to conceptual change in learners.