What do teachers observe? Online review of thesis projects at a university in southern Peru

Abstract

The realization of the research project generates in the thesis students a set of uncertainties and anxieties associated with the review carried out by the thesis reviewers and the evaluative judgments they make (reviewer's observations). This study seeks to analyze the observations made by the reviewers of undergraduate thesis projects at a university in southern Peru. The study is qualitative in nature, based fundamentally on a content analysis methodology. A total of 497 observations made by the jurors to a set of 24 thesis projects presented in the 2022-1 academic semester were compiled. These observations were coded according to occurrence criteria to determine patterns that help characterize the way in which reviewers issue their observations in an asynchronous and anonymous context. Atlas ti software was used to process the data. The results suggest that the jurors' observations present three complementary patterns: first, observations focused on the editing and formatting of the project; second, observations focused on writing and spelling deficiencies; and finally, the third pattern deals with superficial observations focused on content issues. It is concluded that the way in which the jurors' observations are reported does not help the thesis writers to improve their theses, generating on the contrary the risk of producing low quality research.