Assessment and Feedback of Students’ Performance in Distance Education Courses

Abstract

Performance assessment is a strategy to investigate students’ performance in the educational field.This paper aims to demonstrate what composes the performance assessment process, and especially, the feedback application in distance education. To understand these phenomena, it was performed a theoretical review that was supported by two perspectives: performance assessment concepts and the process of performance feedback to the student as a component of the performance assessment in distance education. There is a variety of concepts about performance assessment in the scientific literature. Some definitions emphasize the numeric expression interpretation of the student’s performance, and others focus on feedback’s application as a resource to improve the student’s performance. The performance assessment in distance education happens because of the interaction processes between teacher and student, which are mediated by technologies, and depend on feedback to promote teaching and learning activities. In distance education modality, the feedback to the students’ performance is a relevant issue for the educational orientation process, and for the social and professional performance improvement. The immediate and informative feedback strategy, which uses facilitating resources for the student follow his performance development, assists on the identification of what needs to be modified and refined through the educational process.