Evidence of learning: what are they, types and characteristics?

Let's see what learning evidences are, classified and explained with examples.

In education, all kinds of contents are taught, but this is not a guarantee that students have achieved them. In order to check that students have assimilated them, it is necessary to subject them to exams, make them do work and also to see if they are interested in the subject and get involved.

There are several evidences of learning that can be studied to find out if students are learning, both by finding out what exactly they are internalizing and whether they are interested in the subject matter.

In the following we will talk about the two main types of evidence of learning, as well as discuss some of the most common ones.and discuss some of the most common ones.

What is evidence of learning?

Evidence of learning is the set of evidence that demonstrates the process and outcome of a learning process implemented with students. In other words, they are evidence that confirms to teachers and others involved in the learning process that their students are learning..

This evidence can be of different types and includes curricular planning, the recording of grades, sessions, work sheets, evaluation instruments...

Before applying and evaluating evidence of learning, teachers must determine what they are going to use to know if their students are learning adequately. The use of these evidences usually has a positive effect on the organizational aspect of the educational institution, since it greatly facilitates the assessment of the curriculum content that students are expected to acquire..

However, it should be noted that there may be some impediments to the use of some types of evidence, such as lack of technology, problems in accessing data, lack of time and other aspects such as the organizational attitude of the teaching staff. In addition to this, we can find that another difficulty is that the quality of the evidence analyzed is related to the clarity of the question to be answered with it.

Types of learning evidence

The main criterion for differentiating between types of evidence of learning is according to how objective they are and what kind of questions they answer with respect to student learning. These evidences can be divided into two, direct and indirect, and in any good academic evaluation both should be used, since the former usually provide objective information that is easier to measure, while the latter offer more qualitative, although subjective, information.

Direct evidence of learning

Direct evidence of learning is visible, objective and tangible.. It is a type of evidence that shows exactly what students are and are not learning, answering the question "What have you learned?". Direct evidence is all evidence that passes what might be called the "skeptic's" test.

For example, a person might be skeptical of how students learn, having serious doubts about certain types of more subjective evidence such as self-assessments of students' own writing skills.

On the other hand, the same skeptical person would be less likely to doubt a writing test taken by a student but assessed according to several standard criteria, agreed upon by a committee of experts or by the faculty of the language department as a whole.

Direct evidence of learning is usually standardized and easy to assess both by the learner and the teacher.The direct evidence of learning is usually standardized, easy to assess by both the teacher and any other person involved in teaching, and facilitates the drawing of very objective conclusions. Some of these direct evidences of learning are:

• Archival records
• Behavioral observations
• Competency interviews
• Samples of student work: exams, reports, essays...
• Mock exams
• Defenses and oral presentations
• Final projects
• Performance evaluations

Indirect evidence of learning

Indirect evidence is evidence in which the student is likely to be learning, but does not clearly determine what or how much he or she is learning.. This type of evidence serves to answer the question "What do you claim to have learned?" and we can highlight the following parameters.

1. Reaction

This parameter is the student's satisfaction with the learning experience.

2. Learning

It refers to what they have learned from the learning experience, to what we can learn from their time in the class, course or school..

3. Transfer

Transfer refers to the use of the contents acquired in class applied to other contexts, whether in another subject, in their community or in situations outside the school.whether in another subject, in their community or in situations outside the school.

4. Results

Refers to how what they have learned has served the students to achieve their objectives..

There are tests that, despite having a certain standardized component, are considered indirect because they are based more on what the student claims to have learned than on verifying to what extent he/she has actually learned. Among these we find:

• Learning questionnaires
• Interviews on how the learning helped them
• Satisfaction surveys
• Reflections
• Focus groups

Modalities of evidence of learning

We can comment on some modalities of evidence of learning that serve to analyze the extent to which students are acquiring knowledge and using it both in and out of school. are acquiring knowledge and using it both in and out of school..

1. Evidence of learning processes

This is a type of evidence that, as its name indicates, has to do with learning processes, also having to do with the time invested in the task that the student is asked to perform and the opportunities for learning..

Like virtually any indirect type of evidence, this would not pass the skeptic's test, but it can still provide very valuable information about how learning is occurring.

For example, if we want to assess whether students are learning about mathematics, one evidence would be how long they stay focused doing the exercises when asked to solve some exercises in the class session.

Another example of process-focused evidence of learning would be the time and number of times students spend in the library consulting math books, in addition to the times they borrow these books.

The main advantage of this type of evidence is that it can give more clues as to why students are or are not learning, in addition to the fact that this evidence can be collected while the teaching process of a given content or topic is still ongoing..

2. Evidence on input factors

This type of evidence is related to factors that are given prior to the start of an educational program, either because the learners had been given them before the program began, or because the learners had been given them before the program started.This type of evidence is related to factors that were acquired by the students in previous courses or are conditioned by the infrastructure and teaching style of the center.

There are many aspects that may be affecting student learning. Among them we can find the ratio of students and teachers in class, the scholarships offered by the administration, the budget of educational programs, equipment, teacher training, the contents learned by the students in previous courses...

3. Evidence on learning contexts

This type of indirect evidence is related to the environment in which the learning takes place.. This category includes how motivated the students are, what interests they have about their future, the demands of employers in the area, the needs, offers and demands in the labor market, and cultural factors, among others.