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Students’ Perceptions about Assessment
Students’ Perceptions about Assessment in Higher Education: a Review
Katrien Struyven
Filip Dochy
Steven Janssens
University of Leuven (K.U.Leuven),
Centre for Research on Teacher and Higher Education
Paper presented at the Joint Northumbria/ Earli SIG Assessment and Evaluation Conference: Learning communities and assessment cultures, University of Northumbria at Newcastle, Longhirst Campus, Wednesday 28 - Friday 30 August 2002.
Katrien Struyven, K.U.Leuven, Centre for Research on Teacher and Higher Education, Vesaliusstraat 2, 3000 Leuven, Belgium. Telephone: +32 16 32 60 25. Fax: +32 16 32 62 74. Email:
Abstract
Learning, from a constructivist point of view, is seen as a constructive act of the learner. Along with the changes in learning theory, several instructional innovations and alternative assessment methods found their ways into educational practice. But are these innovations as successful as they promise to be? In this review, the characteristics and impact of assessment are examined from the student’s point of view. Research findings suggest that students’ perceptions about assessment, have considerable influences on students’ approaches to learning. But also vice versa, students’ approaches influence the ways in which students perceive assessment. Furthermore, it was found that students hold strong views about different formats and methods of assessment. For example, within conventional assessment, multiple choice format exams are seen as favourable assessment methods in comparison to essay type questions. But when conventional assessment and alternative assessment methods are compared, students perceive alternative assessment as being more ‘fair’ than the traditional ‘normal’ assessment methods.
Key words: Students’ perceptions, (alternative and conventional) assessment, student learning, approaches to learning, higher education.
Structure and purpose of this review
Learning, according to the latest ‘constructivist’ learning theories, is essentially: (1) constructive, (2) cumulative, (3) self- regulated, (4) goal- oriented, (5) situated, (6) collaborative, and (7) individually different (De Corte, 1996). The learner is an active partner in the process of learning, teaching and assessment. S/he selects, perceives, interprets, and integrates new information to form a coherent and meaningful whole with her/his prior knowledge and former experiences (Dochy, Segers, & Buehl, 1999). These changes in learning theory go together with innovations in instruction and evaluation: new instructional methods are introduced in educational practice, the latest technologies and media are used, and alternative modes of assessment are implemented (Birenbaum, 1996). This belief in the active role of the learner and Entwistle’s (1991) finding that it is the student’s perceptions of the learning environment that influence how a student learns, not necessarily the context in itself, both gave rise to this review that focuses on the influences of conventional and alternative assessment methods from the students’ perspective.
Methodology for the review
The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), the Web of Science and PsychINFO, were searched online for the years 1980 until 2002. The keywords: ‘student* perception*’ and ‘assessment’ were combined. This search yielded 508 hits in the databases of ERIC and PsycINFO and 37 hits within the Web of Science. When this search was limited with the additional keywords ‘higher education’, only 171 and 10 hits respectively remained. Relevant documents were selected and searched for in the libraries and the e- library of the K.U.Leuven: 35 documents met our criteria, in which 36 empirical studies are discussed. For a summary of this literature we refer to the overview (see Table 1), of which the full version is available on request. Theoretical and empirical articles are both included. First, a specific code is given to each article, e.g. 1996/03/EA, which refers to the publication year/ number/ publication type (EA: empirical article/ TA: theoretical article/ CB: chapter of book). Second, the author(s) and title of the publication are presented. For each empirical study, the overview reports on: (1) the content of the study, (2) the type and method of the investigation, (3) the subjects and the type of education in which the study is conducted, (4) the most important results that were found, (5) the independent and (7) dependent variables studied, (6) the treatment which was used, and (8) the type and (9) method of analyses reported in the research. Both qualitative and quantitative investigations are discussed.
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Students’ perceptions about assessment
The repertoire of assessment methods in use in higher education has expanded considerably in recent years. New assessment methods are developed and implemented in higher education, for example: self and peer assessment, portfolio assessment, simulations, and OverAll assessment. The latest constructivist theories and practices go together with a shift from a ‘test’ or ‘evaluation’ culture to an ‘assessment’ culture (Birenbaum, 1996). The notion of ‘alternative assessment’ is used to denote forms of assessment which differ from the conventional assessment methods such as multiple- choice testing and essay question exams, and continuous assessment via essays and scientific reports (Sambell, McDowell, & Brown, 1997). The assessment culture, embodied in current uses of alternative assessment and fully compatible with constructivist ideas, favours: the integration of assessment, teaching and learning; the involvement of students as active and informed participants; assessment tasks which are authentic, meaningful and engaging; assessments which mirror realistic contexts, in contrast with the artificial time constraints and limited access to support available in conventional exams; focus on both the process and products of learning; and moves away from single test- scores towards a descriptive assessment based on a range of abilities and outcomes (Sambell, McDowell & Brown, 1997).
In this part of the review, the literature and research on students’ perceptions about assessment are reviewed. The relation between and impact of (perceived) characteristics about assessment on students’ approaches to learning and vice versa, are examined and discussed. Next, students’ perceptions about different assessment formats and methods are presented, including: open- ended format versus multiple choice format examinations; portfolio assessment; self-, peer and overall assessment; simulations; and finally, also more general perceptions of students about assessment are investigated.
Assessment and Approaches to learning
Assessment is one of the defining features of the students’ approaches to learning (e.g. Marton & Säljö, 1997; Entwistle & Entwistle, 1991; Ramsden, 1997). In this part of the review, an attempt is made to gain insight into the relations between (perceived) assessment properties and students’ approaches to learning and studying.
Approaches to learning
When students are asked for their perceptions about learning, mainly three approaches to learning occur. Surface approaches to learning describe an intention to complete the learning task with little personal engagement, seeing the work as an unwelcome external imposition. This intention is often associated with routine and unreflective memorization and procedural problem solving, with restricted conceptual understanding being an inevitable outcome (Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983; Trigwell & Prosser, 1991; Entwistle, McCune, & Walker, 2001). Deep approaches to learning, in contrast, lead from an intention to understand, to active conceptual analysis and, if carried out thoroughly, generally result in a deep level of understanding. This approach is related to high quality learning outcomes (Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983; Trigwell & Prosser, 1991). And finally, because of the pervasive evidence of the influence of assessment on learning and studying an additional category was introduced, the strategic or achieving approach to learning, in which the student’s intention was to achieve the highest possible grades by using well-organised and conscientious study methods and effective time- management (Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983; Entwistle, McCune & Walker, 2001).
Assessment in relation to students’ approaches and vice versa
The research on the relation between approaches to learning and assessment is dominated by the Swedish Research Group of Marton and Säljö. These two researchers (Marton & Säljö, 1997) conducted a series of studies in which they tried to influence the students’ approaches to learning towards a deep approach to learning. A prerequisite for attempting to influence how people act in learning situations, is to have a clear grasp of precisely how different people act. The learner/ reader, using a deep approach to learning, engages in a more active dialogue with the text. One of the problems with a surface approach is the lack of such an active and reflective attitude towards the text. As a consequence, a fairly obvious idea was to attempt to induce a deep approach through giving people some hints on how to go about learning (Marton & Säljö, 1997).
In his first study, Marton (1976) let students in the experimental group answer questions of a particular kind while reading a text. These questions were of the kind that students who use a deep approach had been found to ask themselves spontaneously during their reading (e.g. can you summarise the content of the whole section in one or two sentences?). This attempt to induce a deep approach, yielded interesting but contra- intuitive results. At one level, it was obvious that the approach taken was influenced by the treatment to which the experimental group was exposed. However, this influence was not towards a deep approach: instead, it seemed to result in a rather extreme form of surface learning. The control group, which had not been exposed to any attempts at influencing approach, performed significantly better on both the immediate and delayed retention measurements.
What happened was that the participants invented a way of answering the interspersed questions without engaging in the learning, characteristic of a deep approach. The task was transformed into a rather trivial and mechanical kind of learning. What allowed the participants to transform the learning in this way, was obviously the predictability of the task. They knew that they would have to answer questions of this particular kind, and this allowed them to go through the text in a way which would make it possible to comply with the demands without actually going into detail about what is said. The outcome of this study raises interesting questions about the conditions for changing people’s approach to learning. The demand structure of the learning situation again proved to be an effective means of controlling the way in which people set about the learning task. Actually it turned out to be too effective. The result was in reality the reverse of the original intention when setting up the experiment (Marton & Säljö, 1997).
A second study (Säljö, 1975) followed. The factor varying between two groups, was the nature of the questions that the groups were asked after reading each of several chapters from an education text-book. One set of questions was designed to require a rather precise recollection of what was said in the text. In the second group, the questions were directed towards major lines of reasoning. The results show that a clear majority of the participants reported that they attempted to adapt their learning to the demands implicit in the questions given after each successive chapter. The crucial idea of this study was that people would respond to the demands that they were exposed to. In the group that was given ‘factual’ questions, this could be clearly seen. They reacted to the questioning through adopting a surface approach. However, in the other group, the reaction did not simply involve moving towards a deep approach. Some did, others did not. Only about half the group interpreted the demands in the way intended. The other students ‘technified’ their learning, again concentrating solely on perceived requirements. They could summarize, but could not demonstrate understanding (Marton & Säljö, 1997).
Both studies (Marton, 1976; Säljö, 1975) illustrate that although in one sense it is fairly easy to influence the approach people adopt when learning, in another sense it appears very difficult. It is obviously quite easy to induce a surface approach, however, when attempting to induce a deep approach the difficulties seem quite profound. The explanation is in the interpretation (Marton & Säljö, 1997).
In a third study, Marton and Säljö (1997) asked students to recount how they had been handling their learning task and how it appeared to them. Besides the questions about what they remembered of the text its content, students were also asked questions designed to discover how they tackled this reading task. The results show an astonishingly simple picture: the students who did not get ‘the point’ (i.e. understand the text as a whole) failed to do so, simply because they were not looking for it. The main difference in the process of learning concerned whether the students focused on the text itself or on what the text is about: the author’s intention, the main point, the conclusions to be drawn. In the latter case the text is not considered as an aim in itself, but rather as a means of grasping something which is beyond or underlying it. It can be concluded that there was a very close relationship between process and outcome. The depth of processing was related to the quality of outcome in learning (Marton & Säljö, 1997).
The students’ perceived assessment requirements seem to have a strong relation with the approach to learning a student adopts when tackling an academic task (Säljö, 1975; Marton & Säljö, 1997). Similar findings emerged from the Lancaster investigation (Ramsden, 1981) in relation to a whole series of academic tasks and also to students’ general attitudes towards studying. Students often explained surface approaches or negative attitudes in terms of their experiences of excessive workloads or inappropriate forms of assessment. The experience of learning is made less satisfactory by assessment methods which are perceived to be inappropriate ones. High achievement in conventional terms may mask this dissatisfaction and also hide the fact that students have not understood material they have learned as completely as they might appear to have done. Inappropriate assessment procedures encourage surface approaches, yet varying the assessment questions may not be enough to evoke fully deep approaches (Ramsden, 1997).
Entwistle and Tait (1990) also found evidence for the relation between students’ approaches to learning and their assessment preferences. They found that students who reported themselves as adopting surface approaches to learning preferred teaching and assessment procedures which supported that approach, whereas students reporting deep approaches preferred courses which were intellectually challenging and assessment procedures which allowed them to demonstrate their understanding. A direct consequence of this effect is that the ratings which students make of their lecturers will depend on the extent to which the lecturer’s style fits what individual students prefer (Entwistle & Tait, 1995).