Evaluation of performance at university with the Rasch Analysis

Abstract

In 2007/2008 the University of Salento has started a degree course in Psychology. Right from the start, the people in charge of the course have been focusing on preventing early dropouts by stimulating a better professional awareness and by ensuring the best possible course experience. To do so, the students were asked increasing performance standards to prevent the choice of university studies as mere alternative to work. This study refers specifically of controlling the training process through the analysis of perfor- mance of students (monitoring career). Normally a review of developments in the curriculum in relation to explanatory variables is performed using sta- tistical inferential model where the dependent variable is the grade obtained in the different disciplines or even the credits acquired by the student. The particular structure of the activity since its inception allows to introduce the evaluation of the curriculum using effectively Rasch Analysis. The model involves the insertion of the exams outcomes analysed in terms of success / failure examination for each of the constituent disciplines of studies. This model establishes a more reliable criteria for the verification of differential variables useful for monitoring the training process (for example: final grade to high school diploma, sex, age, university registration renewal , etc.) and the subsequent management of the training process.