HyPES project - assessment of learning in hybrid learning environments in higher education: what methods and tools?
Résumé
This research was conducted as part of the HyPES project, which aims to study hybrid systems in higher education. It primarily builds on the results of a previous European project, HySUP (Deschryver & Charlier, 2012; Peraya, 2010), which developed a typology of hybrid systems based on five main dimensions: - Integration of in-person and remote learning: the type of articulation between face-to-face teaching phases and distance activities, including spatiotemporal components (access, place, time, rhythm), pedagogical components (objectives, path, sequence, methods, format, content, evaluation), and components of mediated educational communication (learning supports, communication tools, resource persons). - Mediatization: represents the way a teaching system is designed and how digital technology is integrated into it (Peraya, 2008). Two possible approaches to address this mediatization are either through the functions that are mediatized (information, management, production, interaction functions, support, evaluation, metareflection, and awareness), or through the objects that are mediatized within the teaching system (which could be a specific object, a sequence, or the entire system). Mediatization, therefore, signifies the role and importance that the teacher or trainer assigns to digital tools within their teaching system during its design phase (Noben, 2024). - Mediation: the process of transformation that digital tools produce on human behaviors through which the subject interacts with the world, with objects, other subjects, or even with themselves (Peraya & Peltier, 2012). There are several forms of mediation like (semi)cognitive, epistemic, reflective, relational, postural, or praxeological. - Openness of the System: the possibility for the students to choose practical organization modalities, rhythms, the use of external resources, teaching methods, objectives... - Human Support: the type of support provided to students (methodological, metacognitive, cognitive) and the type of person providing support (student, teacher). It also includes the degree of presence (socio-cognitive, socio-affective, and pedagogical) and support modalities (reactive or proactive). This theoretical framework has been enriched by research aimed at developing an integrative model to address the complex dynamics of co-constructing hybrid learning environments (Charlier & Peltier, 2024). These authors emphasize the need to revise the dimensions to identify the types of current systems ("learning design") through an empirical study. They suggest developing and iterating a large-scale survey, with the first questionnaire necessarily being long as it addresses not only the five main dimensions described above but also two complementary dimensions. The first is learning evaluation, including the perception of learning objectives, the adequacy of activities to achieve objectives, the adequacy of evaluation forms concerning objectives, and the support provided to learning through feedback. The second is the evaluation of the environment by students, including the perception of the degree of participation granted to students. Two significant modifications have been made in comparison with the first framework: the integration of variables apprehending the interaction between students and digital teaching and learning environments, and the addition of a dimension related to learning evaluation. Thus, the students perspective has been integrated into the research, i.e., their positioning on the dimensions evaluated by the teachers, through a specific questionnaire. For the evaluation, the modalities and tools (written tests, oral tests, written productions, reflective work, SAE, etc.) as well as their purposes (summative, certification, formative, predictive, normative evaluation, etc.) are addressed in the questionnaire. The study of this last aspect, the evaluation of learning, is at the center of this communication. The responses of more than 170 French-speaking higher education teachers to an online questionnaire have been analyzed. The way teachers design evaluation in hybrid systems and the digital tools used for this purpose will be described. Based on the new enriched reference framework, a new typology of hybrid training systems will be established according to a methodology similar to that used in the HySup project (Burton et al., 2011). The evolutionary aspect of hybrid systems at different stages of development will then be studied according to the dimensions of the enriched reference framework. To do this, the concepts of "study orchestration" and EPA will be mainly investigated. The work of Vermunt and Verloop (1999) and their concepts of friction and alignment will help characterize the changes observed in the configurations. For individual variables, it will be the conceptions of learning, previous learning experiences, and the disposition to learn independently. Finally, for environmental variables, it will mainly be the degree of openness and a description of the learning design of hybrid systems based on the updated typology. The final objective is to develop a developmental and evolutionary model of hybrid systems to evaluate their quality through their respective levels of development.
