Student interactions with e-assessment > Student behaviour

Question 16
What should students be encouraged to do following success in e-assessment?

• Peter Rowlett

Success in e-assessment signals to students that they have developed the required knowledge and understanding, which may result in disengagement from further learning. However, given that e-assessment is limited, and some prefer to test procedural knowledge through e-assessment and support this with deeper learning elsewhere, might this signal be misleading students?

What motivates this question?

Broughton, Hernandez-Martinez and Robinson (2013) say that because students set learning goals based on achieving percentage marks in e-assessment, they do not challenge themselves to go beyond the summative assessment material. That e-assessment does not inspire students to “continue the learning cycle and explore new learning goals” means that there is a point where it is “no longer effective”. Broughton, Hernandez-Martinez and Robinson (2013) observe that a lack of conceptual understanding is only identified in the final exam, which calls into question the ability for e-assessment to act as formative development.

It is entirely plausible that an assessor would use e-assessment for some more procedural aspects of learning as a baseline on which to build deeper concepts, but that students might take success to be an indicator that they are well-prepared for future assessments on this topic (e.g. an examination). This might be a reason why some report misalignment between e-assessment test scores and examination marks, for example Greenhow (2002) observes that “repeatable-on-demand online objective tests do not appear to rank students correctly” (p. 15).

What might an answer look like?

Given the conflicting reports on this point, it could be worthwhile to start by gathering case studies of different approaches to using e-assessment as part of the design of a course. This could be combined with interviews or other qualitative methods to explore students’ experiences.

Ultimately, an answer would provide guidance about how e-assessment systems should be used, in order for students to be encouraged to see success in e-assessment as a driver to set new learning goals.

Related questions

• This is related to questions about the use of e-assessment in course design:
  • Q14: To what extent does repeated practice on randomized e-assessment tasks encourage mathematics students to discover deep links between ideas?
  • Q13: How do students interact with an e-assessment system?
  • Q15: How do students engage with automated feedback? What differences (if any) can be identified with how they would respond to feedback from a teacher?
  • Q27: How can formative e-assessments improve students’ performance in later assessments?
  • Q29: What are suitable roles for e-assessment in formative and summative assessment?
• The relationship between e-assessment results and exam results is also considered in Q36: To what extent do existing e-assessments provide reliable measures of mathematical understanding, as might otherwise be measured by traditional exams?

References

Broughton, S.J., Hernandez-Martinez, P. & Robinson, C.L. (2013). A definition for effective assessment and implications on computer-aided assessment practice. In A.M. Lindmeier & A. Heinze (Eds.), 37th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Kiel, Germany, vol. 2 (pp. 113-120). Berlin: The International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education.

Greenhow, M. (2002). Answer Files — What more do they reveal? Maths-CAA Series, January 2002. Retrieved from http://icse.xyz/mathstore/node/61.html