Faculty and Students Conceptions of Assessment in Higher Education

Abstract

Assessment in higher education serves multiple purposes such as providing information about student learning, student progress, teaching quality, and program and institutional accountability. Yet, little is known about faculty and students' attitudes regarding different aspects of assessment that have wide-ranging implications for policy and practice in tertiary institutions. To investigate these views, parallel surveys of conceptions of assessment were administered to faculty and undergraduate students across four tertiary institutions including universities, an indigenous tertiary institution, and an institute of technology. A mean and covariance structures approach was used to test for measurement invariance and latent means differences between faculty and students regarding their conceptions of assessment. Results revealed differences in the latent means across the two groups. Faculty were likely to view assessment as a trustworthy process aiding teaching and learning, whereas students viewed assessment as focussed primarily on accountability and perceived assessment as irrelevant or even ignored in the teaching and learning process. These findings highlight the importance of ensuring that assessment policy and practices are fit for purposes, and are being carried out with integrity in ways that are transparent to and understood by both staff and students. While these results show how staff and students view assessment practices, one should keep in mind that while the

Las Concepciones sobre el Proceso de Evaluación del Aprendizaje de los Estudiantes / Conceptions about Assessment Process of Students’ Learning

“…Más allá de identificar las concepciones, otros investigadores buscaron comparar las creencias entre docentes y estudiantes universitarios (Fletcher, Meyer, Anderson, Johnston y Rees, 2012). Para ello, los autores realizaron un cuestionario para ambos grupos participantes y lo analizó con modelos de ecuaciones estructurales.…”

Pre-service Teachers’ Preferred Methods of Assessment: A Perspective from Saudi Arabia

“…Kabilan and Khan (2012) explored the effects of Malaysian pre-service teachers being assessed through the use of e-portfolios to document their learning; their study highlighted the benefits, challenges, and competencies that pre-service teachers gained as a result of using nontraditional assessment methods. Fletcher, Meyer, Anderson, Johnston, and Rees (2012) explored the assessment perceptions of New Zealand postsecondary students and faculty. They reported that faculty believed that assessment had a positive impact on student achievement and that, more specifically, it was trustworthy, consistent, and provided feedback to students.…”

“…This is even more the case with regard to students' attitudes toward assessment related to the public (group negotiations) and private (internal reflections) phases of interactive-constructivist interpretations of learning (NRC, 2000). As Fletcher et al (2012) stated, Assessment in higher education serves multiple purposes such as providing information about student learning, student progress, teaching quality, and program and institutional accountability. Yet, little is known about faculty and students' attitudes regarding different aspects of assessment that have wide-ranging implications for policy and practice in tertiary institutions.…”

Conceptions and Practices of Assessment in Higher Education: A Study of Portuguese University Teachers

“…The ways in which assessment is carried out have implications for students' learning (Segers, Gijbels, & Thurlings, 2008) and impact on them even before they are assessed (Rowntree, 1987), namely in terms of their approaches to learning (Boud & Falchikov, 2006;Fletcher, Meyer, Anderson, Johnston, & Rees, 2012). The ways in which teachers see assessment influence their assessment practices and how they relate these practices to the teaching and learning process (Fletcher et al, 2012;Samuelowicz & Bain, 2002). Teachers' approaches to teaching are also related to their conceptions of teaching (Trigwell & Prosser, 1996) which will influence in turn how they assess students' learning (Watkins, Dahlin, & Ekholm, 2005).…”