ARTICLE REVIEW

INVESTIGATING THE UNDERGRADUATE EXPERIENCE OF ASSESSMENT

IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Introduction

This research has been done by Lee King Siong from University Kebangsaan

Malaysia with assisted by Associate Professor Hazita Azman and Associate Professor

Koo Yee Lie, in which both are from University Kebangsaan Malaysia. Lee King Siong

is a doctorate student which now doing her study related to assessment in higher

education.

Overview

This study was investigating students’ experience of assessment in higher

education as to show how these are conveyed through institutional discourses and also

looking through practice of lectures and how students’ learning behaviour may be

affected by their perspectives of assessment ( Lee, Hazita & Koo, 2010). Here the

researcher was concerned on how assessment could affect students learning behaviour as

what had been mentioned by the researcher an assessment driven learning of the students

in higher educations. This research was done by Lee King Siong as first writer, while

Hazita Azman along with Koo Yew Lie was her supervisors.

This quest was involving BA ELS students of University Kebangsaan Malaysia,

from language studies and linguistic. Her respondents were judicious from 3 specific

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students (13 students) were truly involved in the discussions. What more, Lee had used

individual confabulation with 6 students, 6 semi-structured interviews which denote 6 of

the students lecturers. Besides that, she also done observations of lecturers and classroom

assessment, examination of documents related to the course descriptions and assessment,

as well as s study of the administrative and procedural aspects of assessment as part of

the research. Selective students were chosen due to their aplenty experience of

assessment to accommodate broader proportion to the researcher.

The focal points of this paper were to examine at the students as the main

stakeholder in the process called ‘higher education’ (Lee, Hazita & Koo, 2010), second

the researcher was interested at the indispensable mission of higher education is to

educate and prepare students for a lifetime of learning in work and in the community.

Last but not least, Lee was concerned of the centrality of assessment in higher education

as it was claimed that ‘the truth about an educational system and what student qualities

and achievements it values can be found in its assessment procedures (Knight, 1995).

Analysis

From her assay of the conversations, interviews, observations and examinations of

document related, she had came up with 5 crucial themes which had emerged from her

preliminary analysis of the data. The first one was general perceptions of assessment

viewed by her respondents. Based on the respondents’ assessment was crucial aspect of

students’ lives and what eminent was the effort that had been put on an assignment

depended on the marks given for it. In excess of, modes of assessment were varied

among the students, but primarily no one verbalize a fondness for examination. Here

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these students preferred project work or quizzes. For them this on-going assessment

(formative assessment) was easy to score and they were given autonomy of learning as

they could learn on their own how to operate computer software to produce a poster and

were able to work in teams and develop confidence (Lee, Hazita & Koo, 2010).

Withal, individual project paper was taken as a challenge to the students as it

forced them to be independent, analytical and critical. As for group projects were in

demand as students generally employed working together with friends, ergo assessment

through group project had managed to train students in the soft skills such as teamwork,

communication and presentation skills (Lee, Hazita & Koo, 2010).

Second, Lee had derived impact of assessment on learning behaviour where

students seemed to resort to memorisation or regurgitation of lecture notes when they

were under pressure to study or prepare for an assessment. Nevertheless, this method

could only be implemented for written assessment quiz or exam but for formative

assessment this method may not be a viable strategy.

Expectation of feedback was the third premise been analysed from the data. Here,

most of the students did not be opposed if they did not get any written feedback from

their respected lecturers as they had been used to not receiving any feedback from their

teachers during their school days. Yet, one respondent said she expected more feedback

from her lecturers. Contrary with the lecturers instead of giving the students written

feedback they provided the students with consultation sessions. In spite of that, minimal

number of students interested in consultation and only good students would turn up for

consultation.

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 Achieving dexterous grade was students priority hence they willing to do

anything to scoring it. To such a degree Lee fourth premise was roaming around value of

cumulative grade point average (CGPA). The BA ELS respondents were admitting that

achieving good grades were important as some of them did set a target CGPA to enact,

but mostly they just accepted whatever grade given by the lecturers. These grades also

would give a sense of pride to the students and also gain respect from the others.

The last theme derived from the data was reproduction of values and beliefs. Been

provide the means of learner-centred teaching, students at higher education institutions

were captured in perception of equitable in the university due to diverse types of

assessment, yet the lecturers still had been the sole authority to decide of what to assess

and how to evaluate. Furthermore, it did not occur to either the assessor or the assessed

that it could or should be the otherwise. Students’ acumen on achievement was based on

the learners assessment of their works, as the power over their fate was seen to be rested

solely in the lecturers or assessor (Lee, Hazita & Koo, 2010).

As for administrative point of view, students’ lack of knowledge about assessment

made no point in seeking students’ view or feedback on assessment (Lee, Hazita & Koo,

2010). Due to that notion effect how students apprehend assessment in which they merely

comply with assessment exigency and then commit their fates to their lecturers without

considering the possibility that they could affect the outcome (Lee, Hazita & Koo, 2010).

Lee concluded her paper by mentioning that the evidence was far to convincing

(based on the data collected) that mode of assessment seemed to affect learning. She also

interjects her concern on how to make these modes of assessment assist students to

become better learners. In additional, without giving any proper feedback to the students

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written assignments deprived valuable means of learning from their mistakes and

weaknesses. Moreover, higher learning education institutional planning for

transformation into a world-class higher education system and its focus on quality

enhancements initiatives (Lee, Hazita & Koo, 2010) would not take root if students

preserve to be too exam or grade conscious. Assessment was seen as a means of

measuring how much students had learnt rather than as a means of intercede them to

learn. With exam cognizant as their main notion, students only bearing with the grades

they set rather then pursuing of knowledge and imperatively they perceive their lecturers

as all-powerful where grades are concerned.

Howbeit, this paper was just taken as preliminary findings from focus group

discussion and for that reason it was not appropriate to come up with rigid conclusions

based on it. Over and above, after reading the paper thoroughly few constituents that have

irked my mind would be how to implement adept assessment in our higher learning

institutions to assist students learning and my another concern would be how feedback

can promote learning among students. These will be elaborate under critique and

recommendation.

Critique and Recommendation

It has been well described by Lee King Siong and associates that our higher

learning institution is still constrained to traditional method of assessment despite the

propaganda of having or moving or even reaching world-class institution. With lecturers

as sole breed to contribute grades, our assessment system will still be under exam

oriented (paper pencil) system. Our traditional assessment is hardly seen as concoct of

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bringing out the aptitude that exists within the students and generate an opportunity for

them to evince what the students capable of.

Educational assessment is away to discover and evaluate students’ overall

performance and generating assumptions regarding their learning and production

education wise (Sadler, 2005). On the contrary the success of an assessment is depending

on effectiveness of selection also use of a applicable maneuver as well as on the proper

interpretation of students’ performance (Chan & Gurnam, 2010). In this manner,

assessment procedures also benefit in evaluating teaching methodology and the

instructional materials (Richard, 1994).

Recently with open door policy, our education system has more from rigidly

exam ascribes based to formative assessment. This on going assessment nourishes both

pedagogical practices of teachers and to carter distinct instructional support for lower

performing students (Dunn & Mulvenon, 2009).

My main concernment will be on how to implement this assessment in higher

learning institution as to abetment students learning. According to Richard James (1994)

in assessment guide book stated, the best assessment tasks will be those that are part of

learning process. While, assessment that probing students learning should be designed as

to contribute on students learning experience.

As follows, to implement assessment that probing students learning in higher

learning education, it must communicate assessment requirements accurately, clearly and

early. To boot, assessment must be designed to conceal all aspects of the course

adequately. If one fails to do so, students will feel lost in completing the tasks and that

can resort to low achievement and grades. In Lee’s paper, she did not mention about any

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briefing of assessment at early of the course, in my opinion, a clear brief handout given

prior to the course can communicating assessment requirement acutely to students. For

me myself to have a clear cut line has help me a lot to discern what I should focus on

during the course, as assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have

clear, explicitly stated purpose (Alexander, Trudy, K. Patricia, Elaine, Peter, Pat,

Theodore, Kay, Marcia, Margaret, E. Thomas & Barbara, 1996).

Next, we must fabricate affective assessment to reflect an understanding of

learning as multidimensional, integrated and revealed in performance over time

(Alexander et al., 1996). It evokes not only what students know but what they can do

with what they know (Alexander et al., 1996). Hence, assessors should reflect these

understanding by assigning several of contrivances that evolve actual performance, using

them over time so as to reveal change, growth and increasing degrees of integration with

such will congeal bases for improving our students’ educational experience.

One thing that I realized about this paper is that Lee did touch much on the

outcomes based on the assessment but did not touch the experience that lead to those

outcomes (Lee, Hazita & Koo, 2010). Here it has knocked my cognitive to give a stress

in implementing good assessment, to acknowledge where our students ‘end-up’ is a great

matter (Alexander et al., 1996). Nonetheless, to improve outcomes we need to be aware

what students experience regarding their curricula, teaching and students’ deed that

compels to particular outcomes. Via good assessment it can help us to conceive which

students learn most under what conditions and which knowledge comes with capacity to

recuperate the whole of their learning (Alexander et al., 1996).

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 Closing one eye towards feedback in assessment can lead to inclination of grades

and quality of learning as students will not be able to learn from their mistakes that they

might have done during the assessment and due to that our students learning experience

and the quality of the education it self will go downslide. Enumerate by teaching

development unit in New Zealand (2009), feedback is a crucial part of the learning cycle,

but both students and teachers at regular intervals express disappointment and frustration

in relation to the conduct of the feedback process. Students also complaint that feedback

on assessment is unhelpful or unclear and to make thing worst they are not given proper

guidance as how to use feedback to improve their performance, besides that lecturers

have thrown their own clamour that students are not interested in feedback comments and

are only concerned with the marks. Thus, to promote feedback as an enhancement to

learning, teachers as well as students should promote dialogue and conversation around

the goals of the assessment task, further assessors or lecturers ought to enlarge the range

of participants in the feedback conversation-incorporate self and peer feedback (Nicol &

Draper, 2008). Lecturers or assessors need to keep in mind to impart feed forward, as to

indicate what students need to think about in order to bring their task performance closer

to the goals(Nicol & Draper, 2008). What important is that lecturers need to design

feedback comments that invite self-evaluation and future self-learning management as to

sustenance students learning via feedback.

Conclusion

After having a deep cogitation as well as in depth reading, both good assessment

and feedback practice ought to be implemented during our teaching, learning and

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assessing session as to promote quality learning to the students. Thus a good assessment

should assist to give clear goals, criteria, standard or task to the students as to have a

brilliant end product. What more, it should also deliver high quality feedback information

that helps learners to self-correct, as what I always say to my students, ‘We learn from

mistake, from there we can improve’, once the students have the opportunities to act on

feedback the more they going to employ good learning experience.

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References

Alexander, W. A., Trudy, W. B., K. Patricia, C., Elaine, E., Peter, T. E., Pat, H.,

Theodore, J. M., Kay, M. M., Marcia, M., Margaret, A. M., E.Thomas, M. & Barbara,

D. W., (1996). Nine principles of good practice for assessing student learning.

Retrieved 20 February 2011, from

http://ultibase.rmit.edu.au/Articles/june97/ameri1.htm

Chan, Y.F. & Gurnam, K. S. (2010). Authentic assessment and pedagogical strategies in

higher education. Journal of social sciences. 6(2). 153-161.

Craddock, D. & Mathias, H. (2009). Assessment options in higher education. Assess.

Evaluat. Higher Educ., 34: 127-140.

Dunn, K.E. & Mulvenon, S.W. (2009). A critical review of research on formative

assessments: The limited scientific evidence of the impact of formative assessments

in education. 1-11. Retrieved 20 February 2011, from

http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=14&n=7

Knight, P. (1995). Assessment for learning in higher education. London, Kogan page.

Lee, K.S., Hazita, A. & Koo, Y.L. (2010). Investigating the undergraduate experience of

assessment in higher education. Gema online journal of language studies.

10(1), 17-33. Retrieved 20 February 2011, from

http://www.ukm.my/ppbl/Gema/GEMA%202010/pp%2017_33.pdf

Nicol, D. & Draper, S. (2008). Redesigning written feedback to students when class

size are large. Paper presented at the Improving University Teachers Conference.

Richard, J. (1994). Assessment. Centre for the study of higher education. Retrieved

20 February 2011, from http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/pdfs/assessment%20.pdf

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Sadler, R. (2005). Interpretations of criteria-based assessment and grading in higher

education. 175-194.

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