Producción Científica – Proyecto INEDU

This paper addresses the relationship between student evaluation of teaching (SET) and academic achievement in higher education. Meta-analytic studies on teaching effectiveness show a wide range of results, ranging from small to medium correlations between SET and student achievement, based on diverse methodological approaches, sample size studies, and contexts. This work aimed to relate SET, prior academic achievement, and academic achievement in a large sample of higher education students and teachers, using different methodological procedures, which consider as distinct units of analysis the group class and the individuals, the variability between students within classes, and the variability between group-class means, simultaneously. The data analysis included the calculation of group-class means and its relationship with the group-class mean academic achievement, through correlation and hierarchical regression techniques; additionally, a multilevel path analysis was applied to the relationship between prior academic achievement, SET, and their academic achievement, considering the variability among group classes. A multisection analysis was also carried out in those course disciplines in which there was more than one class group (section). The results of individual and group-class analysis revealed that SET was moderately low but related to academic achievement in a significant way once the effect of previous academic achievement was controlled. In addition, multilevel path analysis revealed the effect of SET on achievement, both within and between group-class levels. The results of the analysis carried out in the course disciplines with different sections, according to a multisection design, yielded similar results to the individual and aggregated data analyses. Taken together, the results revealed that SET was low related to academic achievement, once the effect of previous academic achievement was controlled. From these results, it follows that the use of SET as a measure of teachers’ effectiveness for making administrative decisions remains controversial.

This work validates a teaching evaluation instrument applied to professors in engineering, sciences and higher technological levelprograms of the Escuela Politécnica Nacional, using the method of Factor Analysis with extraction of principal components. Thedatabase used for the research was previously examined and refined due to inconsistency, eg. outliers, out of range values, etc.The result of the method described above was a reduced survey of 15 items, which was obtained from an original study of 33items. This new questionnaire clearly identifies the four main dimensions or aspects required: teaching development and planning,teacher-student relationship, evaluation, and a global assessment question. The reduction of the evaluation scale will allow toimprove the process of integral teaching performance evaluation of the faculty at Escuela Politécnica Nacional, and this methodcould serve as a benchmark for the teaching evaluation process of other universities that belong to the higher education system of Ecuador.

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic dramatically changed daily activities globally. In the field of higher education, many universities had to carry out their functions in virtual mode. The Escuela Politécnica Nacional is an Ecuadorian university, the study modality of which stayed face-to-face in more than 150 years of history. However, since the pandemic, said university had to adapt all its classes to the virtual modality. In this study, we conducted a comparative analysis of academic performance between students who entered to the university leveling course during the pandemic and those who did so before the pandemic. To do this, we analyzed the information of 9,267 students who entered the institution for the first time between 2017 and 2020. We carried out a Variance Analysis the factor of which was the study modality, and then we carried out a Tukey post hoc test to identify homogeneous groups. The results showed that the students who entered the leveling course in virtual mode presented an academic performance significantly higher than the historical academic performance of the students who had face-to-face classes. Nevertheless, results do not necessarily indicate that the students of that period and modality have obtained more knowledge. These findings coincide with some authors who establish that the academic performance of university students is not a reference for cognitive evaluation in all its magnitude, since this process causes the labeling of them, the subjects, and the teachers themselves, placing them in a range evaluation that can determine the capacity, effectiveness, and quality of the teaching-learning process.

At present, educational research has incorporated the psychosocial factors involved in the educational process into its fields of study, given their undeniable impact on the training of students. Different approaches have been proposed to study the impact of these factors, including the methodologies of the Theory of Change, based on analyzing the causes inherent to the study phenomenon and then determining the consequences and impact. Consequently, it is proposed to identify the psychosocial impact of a Socio-academic Intervention Course on Beneficiary Students of Affirmative Action Policies. For this, through procedures framed in the Theory of Change, an analysis of the resources used throughout the process of socio-academic support was carried out.

The success of a student in an Institution of Higher Education is given by multiple factors intrinsic and extrinsic to the student. One of the variables is emotional intelligence (EI), the ability to adapt to the university environment, especially in those students who are starting their professional studies. This article aims to study EI, using the TMMS-24 (Trait Meta-Mood Scale) measurement scale applied to students who entered the leveling course of the Escuela Politécnica Nacional during the second academic period of 2019, considering for this, the conditions of vulnerability and the sex of the student. From the comparative analysis between students in conditions of vulnerability and non-vulnerable students, it was evidenced that, for the sub-dimensions, clarity of feelings and emotional repair, there is an approximate percentage coincidence and distribution by frequency for the two study groups regardless of sex. On the other hand, it is highlighted those male students from non-vulnerable groups present an adequate perception of emotions compared to male students from vulnerable groups. In addition, for the female sex, it is appreciated that students from vulnerable groups pay little attention to their emotions, while students from non-vulnerable groups present a much more adequate perception of their emotions.

The Escuela Politécnica Nacional (EPN) from Ecuador is one of the most important educational institutions of the country. In the last year, among its main achievements was to move from the position 151 on the 2017 to 126 in the year 2019 and it is estimated by 2020 to be ranked in the position 98, as indicated in the QS Latin American University Ranking. However, the percentage of the students, who pass the initial knowledge leveling courses, was 15.62% of the first time they enroll, increasing to 38.20% in their second enrollment opportunity. One of the most affected groups in both approval and attrition are students who belong to vulnerable groups, constituting 24% of the total number of students at the EPN.

The Escuela Politécnica Nacional (EPN) is a public university of Ecuador, recognized as one of the most important universities in the country due to its contribution to the national scientific and technological development. In Ecuador, the education system has changed significantly in the last decade, increasing coverage, quality parameters and profiles of entry and output of both high school and undergraduate degrees. With these changes, the Ecuadorian government has tried to establish an educational system according to the current needs of society and the productive sector.

Since 2017, “Secretaría Nacional de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (SENESCYT),”has included, among the new students of the “Escuela Politécnica Nacional (EPN)”, the population segment of vulnerable groups, called “Política de Cuotas” . These students tend to have low academic performance and high dropout rates. Mathematics, which is very important for the training of Engineering students, presents the lowest performance indicators. For this reason, the EPN, to solve this problem, proposes a pilot program in Mathematics for engineering students who are part of vulnerable groups. For this, a descriptive analysis of the students enrolled in the Leveling Course between the semesters 2017-A and 2018-A was carried out. Based on the opinion of the teachers of the ""Departamento de Formación Básica (DFB)"", a diagnostic test was designed and applied to new students in the 2018-B semester. We determined that the “Política de Cuotas” students presented low percentages of approval and high percentages of school dropouts during the period studied, also, the students of “Política de Cuotas” obtained a low average grade in the diagnostic test, even when the evaluated subjects contemplated only Basic mathematics. In this context, it is proposed that the pilot program be structured in 6 units, with emphasis on Geometry, Trigonometry and Real Functions. It is recommended that the pilot program be implemented as a previous course before the leveling course, so that the “Política de Cuotas” Government's program, fulfills its mission of effectively including students from vulnerable groups to Higher Education System.

This work carries out the Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the teaching evaluation instrument of the National Polytechnic School of 14 items; the database used was 3072 records previously cleared for inconsistency and stereotyped responses. The result of the described method is a model that partially adjusts to the data, so an alternative model was proposed that includes new relationships between parameters, obtaining an improvement in the model's adjustment criteria.

En investigaciones realizadas anteriormente en la Escuela Politécnica Nacional se evidenciaron altos porcentajes de reprobación y deserción estudiantil en el curso de nivelación, comprobando que no existe un nivel homogéneo en la educación media. Los datos obtenidos de esta investigación tienen por objetivo realizar un diagnóstico para detectar las necesidades de formación de los bachilleres y presentar una propuesta de un curso de intervención integral para los estudiantes que ingresan a la Escuela Politécnica Nacional. Para esto, se elaboró un instrumento de evaluación de conocimientos previos, que incluye 55 preguntas de Matemática y 25 preguntas de Lenguaje y Comunicación. Este instrumento fue aplicado a una muestra de 1249 estudiantes que obtuvieron un cupo en la Escuela Politécnica Nacional para el período 2019-A (abril-agosto). Adicionalmente, se realizó un análisis de datos para determinar las principales falencias académicas y con ello se proponen los contenidos de un curso que permita disminuir el índice de reprobación.