Instituto Superior Técnico

Conselho Pedagógico

Guidelines for Students and Professors

[Last updated on January 2022]

The fundamental principle is to focus teaching on the objective of learning and not on assessment, viewing the latter as a means and not an end.
[Students] Learning:

– Enrollment whenever possible in no more than 30 ECTS per semester, and no more than 15 ECTS per term.

– Attendance to most of the classes, regardless of their type (theory, problems, laboratory, hands-on, etc).

– Organization of autonomous study in all curricular units by organizing a weekly calendar.

– Organization of the time to prepare for evaluation by formulating a calendar for the entire term.

– Organization of the effort to deliver the projects at the end of the classes, so that during the week of preparation for exams there are only presentations and discussions of projects and reports.

– Remind Professors of the benefit of a short break in the middle of 2-hour classes.

– Ask Professors for guidance for autonomous study.

– Ask Professors for an estimate of how much time you are expected to take with each project.

– Ensure with Student Delegates that MAPs and deadlines for submission of reports and projects are evenly distributed throughout the term, asking for changes, if necessary, before March 25.

 

[Professors] Regarding teaching:

– Implement a short break in the middle of classes of 2 hours.

– In lectures, raise questions to the students with some frequency to engage then.

– Provide support materials for classes and autonomous study before each subject is taught; introduce, when the size of the class allows, the flipped-classroom format.

– Maintain a relevant practical/problem solving component in Theoretical-Practical classes.

– Indicate on the webpage of the curricular unit the expected hours of autonomous work required over the period (preferably the estimate of their distribution per week)

– Promote the use of digital tools to facilitate autonomous study without the need for constant interaction to teachers.

 

[Professors] Regarding evaluation methods:

– Use MAPs as Monitoring for better study planning and/or teaching methods and not as traditional tests, especially if the percentage of continuous assessment is less than 100%. In this sense, it is recommended not to use MAP45, unless strictly necessary given the nature of the curricular unit, and in this case not more than 2, opting for 2 only when the assessment is 100% continuous.

– In case of weekly MAPS, consider a subset for the final grade, to avoid that the loss of a MAP for unexpected reasons e.g. illness or other, significantly impairs the grade of this component.

– Decrease the variety of typologies and the number of moments of continuous assessment throughout each period: the best practices of the 1st semester indicate an ideal value of 2 different typologies of continuous assessment per UC.

– In the case of projects to be carried out in a single academic period, resize them in relation to semester UC practices. Projects planned for 14 weeks cannot be applied in the same format for 7 weeks. It is recalled that, according to the evaluation rules, it is necessary to estimate the time that students will have to spend on each project, resizing them if necessary, and to indicate the evaluation criteria.

– Give fast feedback to the continuous evaluation; in this sense, using digital assessment with automatic correction, or Teaching Assistants and Graders.

– Limit the discussion of projects and reports to the minimum possible during the exam preparation week.

– Project delivery deadlines should not be extended to the exam preparation week.

– Limit the imposition of a minimum grade in the final exam, especially when the exam has a lower weight than the continuous component.

-In the case of curricular units in which the contents assessed in the exam do not add formative value compared to that assessed in the MAPs, give preference to 100% continuous assessment.

 

Consult also:

https://conselhopedagogico.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/files/sites/32/guia-para-as-avaliacoes.pdf

https://tecnico.ulisboa.pt/files/2021/09/regulamento-avalia-o-de-conhecimentos-e-compet-ncias.pdf

https://conselhopedagogico.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/informacoes/atividades-cp/