To evaluate and to be evaluated: an experience on the working up of research projects

The evaluation is one of the main activities of working process of any nature and it seeks to transform and integrate the participants by enlarging their perspectives. The objective of this study arose from the students’ experience on research projects’ evaluation, in one subject of the Master’s degree in Health Education, at Fortaleza University and aimed at identifying the students’ perception about this process and the changes occurred from this experience. It was a descriptive study held by means of a questionnaire with open questions answered by 17 students from that Master’s degree, at the end of the subject of Research Seminar II. The results were processed and examined based on the content analysis and gathered in five categories: feelings at evaluating; feelings at being evaluated; attitudes; evaluation method and changes. At evaluating, feelings of development, responsibility and satisfaction prevailed. As they were evaluated, most of the students showed fear, stress, insecurity and difficulty to listen the critics. In the position of “being evaluated”, a critical, impartial and objective positioning surpassed. The projects’ evaluation method was considered satisfactory for 100% of the students. Among the occurred changes, points out the greater critics’ acceptance, the practice of humility and the opportunity of putting oneself in the other’s place. The adopted teaching-learning process stimulated both the critical reflection and the auto critics among the students, allowing the practical learning, the research projects’ improvement and personal and professional ripening, consolidating itself as an important educational strategy in the researchers’ formation.