Students’ and Faculty Members’ Perceptions and Experiences of Classroom Assessment: A Case Study of a Public University in Afghanistan

Abstract

Objective: The primary goal of the study was to examine students’ perceptions of classroom assessment at a public university in Afghanistan. Exploring current assessment practices focused on student and faculty members lived experiences was a secondary goal. The study also sought to collect evidence on whether or not the new assessment policy was effective in student achievement. Method: Authors used an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design to conduct the study. Initially, we applied the Students Perceptions of Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ), translated into Dari/Farsi and validated, to collect data from a random sample of 400 students from three colleges: Agriculture, Education, and Humanities. Response rate was 88.25% (<em>N</em> = 353). Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from a purposeful sample of 18 students and 7 faculty members. Descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA, and <em>t</em>-tests were used to analyze quantitative data, and NVivo 12 was used to conduct thematic analysis on qualitative data. Results: The quantitative results suggest that students have positive perceptions of the current assessment practices. However, both students and faculty members were dissatisfied with the grading policy, reinforcing summative over formative assessment. Results support that the policy change regarding assessment has resulted in more students passing the courses compared to in the past. The findings also suggest improvements in faculty professional skills such as assessment and teaching and ways that they engage students in assessment processes. Implication for Policy and Practice: Recommendations include revisiting the grading policy at the national level to allow faculty members to balance the formative and summative assessment and utilizing assessment benchmarks and rubrics to guide formative and summative assessment implementation in practice.

Performance-Based Assessment in Contemporary Classroom Assessment: The Forms and Nature

“…In this process, the student will initially picture the whole activity at a glance, outline the principles involved, and gather and arrange relevant materials required before putting up the demonstration just to ensure that the activity incorporates all necessary principles and assumptions. This confirmed what Herrera et al., [23] said that PBA tasks assess all aspects of student learning by determining means by which students assimilate information, store, and apply information in novel ways. However, Nitko argued that every learning target cannot be assessed using PBA.…”

Primary school teachers’ assessment for learning practice for students’ learning improvement

“…Besides, according to Boud and Dawson (2021), Gebremariam and Gedamu (2022), Hailay (2017), andTeshome (2016) in the educational system in Ethiopia teachers' assessment for learning practices seems too questionable. From the assessment for learning practice expected to ensure the students' learning improvement through day to day classroom practice (Bordoh et al, 2015;Popham, 2017;Mussawy et al, 2021;Yan and Pastore, 2022). This implies that assessment is used as a means of learning progress for improvement (Molloy et al, 2020;Hussain et al, 2021).…”

“…In the instructional process effective assessment for learning practice results the sustainable students' learning improvement. This assessment for learning practice has its own objective, to assist students' learning progress in improving their learning, updating their cognitive process of learning and develop the abilities through assessment for learning concepts and practices (Teshome, 2016;Mussawy et al, 2021). Previous studies (e.g., Popham, 2008Popham, , 2017Black and Wiliam, 2009;Pattalitan, 2016;Farrel, 2017;Sultana, 2019;Gedamu and Shewangezaw, 2020;Schildkamba et al, 2020) have confirmed that this type of assessment is an ongoing process of learning and teaching to safeguard that educational objectives and specific goals of subject matters are met, respectively.…”

“…According to and Popham (2008) studies teachers' perspectives on assessment for learning and classroom practices are as follows: (i) there is a lack of awareness of concepts and practices of assessment for learning, which makes it difficult to implement assessment in large class sizes with high noise levels; (ii) there is a mismatch between the teachers' assessment for learning beliefs and orientations (they assume as time-consuming and difficult to implement in classrooms), and assessment for learning principles that help students' learning progress (Brown et al, 2019;Schildkamba et al, 2020). Other challenges include teachers' preference for objective question tests to save time and reduce workload (Mussawy et al, 2021). The identified potential challenges influence teachers' assessments of learning practices for long-term student learning improvement (Carless and Boud, 2018;Brown et al, 2019).…”

The implementation of learning-oriented reading assessment to enhance secondary school students’ English reading ability

“…Students' perceptions in this study refer to how students perceive the assessment (Mussawy, 2009) in the aspects of task, test, teacher's observation, feedback, and redesign when LORA is implemented in the reading class as the framework developed from Jones and Saville's (2016) model. They are observed using five-Likert scale questionnaire and semi-structured interview (Alokozaya, 2022& Phongsirikul, 2018.…”