How can assessment help in engaging students and unleash their intrinsic motivation?
I think that students do not like to be tested.
Ever?
Well, it depends a little bit on, say, well,
do we speak in terms of like exams or do we speak in terms of projects?
Which is different, they say more and more to
a general assessment instead of the actual exam kind of form.
They do not really like it,
but as I said before,
providing exams is very important for other reasons.
Mainly, to provide evidence that you achieved a minimum level of competence,
which is very important for students to show to the outside world.
But also, students want to be sure that if they put in
efforts and time and all their cognitive abilities into acquiring a degree,
which becomes more and more important in future.
And there are students who did not put any effort,
who did not have the cognitive ability and they could pass anyway.
That would not be fair for students amongst one another and they really react to this.
I know from from a case that we know from psychology in University of Amsterdam,
which they said, well, for year one,
we want to introduce compensating testing.
So, if you have a four for exam A but you have an eight for exam B,
then they can be compensated so that you have on average six or seven so you can pass.
There were the students who were opposed to this measure because, "Oh,
but that's not fair because students who got a four,
they have an advantage of students who scored higher."
And they were very much afraid said the students, the Student Union,
that the outside world and they self-thought that the level of
their education would be lowered which really opposed to.
So, yes, it's both.
They do not like it, but they think it's a necessity and it's an important necessity.
But if we look at modern education programs,
then modern education programs have changed from an input model of learning,
so many hours on this particular discipline,
so many hours on that discipline,
so many weeks in this particular practice rotation,
to an outcome-based model of
learning in which we define the outcomes at the end of training.
And the outcomes are then monitored throughout the curriculum.
And what we then need is more longitudinal forms of assessment.
So, you can check your progress.
You can check your progress.
And I think that's really important,
that's really important because,
every teacher will recognize that if learners will have had
a particular subject in the first year and they come to the third year,
by God, they don't know anything about that anymore.
So, you have to look at it more longitudinally,
more developmentally, and we're not used to doing that.
I think, it's very important and that is what I put into practice in my teaching and
what my department is very much focused on that we diversify our assessments.
We have been in the situation approximately seven to eight years back,
where we noted that a type of very
inviting assessment during the course was very similar across courses.
In almost all courses students were demanded to develop
an idea and to explain in a summarizing way,
how they would tackle that idea in research.
That's, of course, a format that can be done in many courses,
but students got totally bored, because this was again,
concept linked to theory, operationalize,
research, interviews, survey, experimental, too similar.
So, we now concentrate on curriculum-wise,
that assessments are linked to different types of assignments.
So, in some cases,
in my course, for example,
the very first one in the first year is
partly critical reading off a paper in a very structured way,
that's one type of assessment,
to confirm to students already in the second week how well they read.
But in the third week,
they get a far more open type of assignment to write
a paper about a day-to-day experience they have in,
it's called breaking the rules in non-verbal communication,
and to observe what happens when they,
for example, stand too close to someone else in the elevator,
how other people deal with that communicatively.
So, different type of assessment and at the end of the course,
a combination of open questions and multiple choices.
Well, students, in particular, like to be assessed,
well, research says so,
if the task they have to do for an assessment,
maybe an MC question or maybe a project,
resembles as much as possible the actual task they would come to in
the workplace or in research when they have done
their studies or in this society as a whole.
Research shows that such kinds of tasks, in particular,
I like projects for this or problems-based learning or whatever,
they like those kinds of assessments the most, I think.
Should feel relevant, I think.
It's the most relevant,
they have time to adapt.
There's intermediate feedback, they can learn with peers,
they can work on societal-relevant cases or workplace-relevant cases.
I think, they like that the most.
You also see that when assessments are positioned in the professional context,
they are more willing to work harder.
Why is that?
Because they want to become a good doctor.
So, it's easy for them to connect to the future practice.
I think that one of
the most fundamental problems in education is the problem of transfer.
That is, if you think you have learned something,
you cannot automatically apply it to when you need it.
So, this is a very fundamental problem in education.
That's why modern education programs actually allow
learners to constantly practice with transfer.
Basically, through the provision of authentic tasks,
either in projects, some cases or problems.
And you challenge the learners and then you get them engaged.
And the effect of engagement is that you want to do
more of it and time doesn't really count.
And that's what typically modern education programs do.
They challenge through provision of interesting tasks,
where you actually pay attention to transfer.
You constantly pay attention to transfer.
That's the basis of for example for all this learning.
You provide a problem as a challenge for the learning.
And naturally, for a medical student,
that will be different from an engineering student,
the problem will be different.
That's why in engineering, they work a lot with projects,
but it's through this engagement that you get good learning and good assessment.
And intrinsic motivation is more a learning outcome than a pre-condition.
So, that's a complication in
the assessment that if you have a trajectory in mind across your course,
towards the end of the course,
you need to compromise every now and then on your actual grading policies.
And they, of course,
need to feel that the stakes are not too high on the first assessment,
there's room for improvement.
That's true indeed.
It's motivational theory coming into the room again.
But I think, our system is built in such a way
that it leads to a lot of extrinsic motivation, particularly in assessment.
It's a domino game of doing all the hurdles.
And that doesn't bring a lot of engagement.
Students who are high on competence motivation really like
the quiz character of assessment to be confronted with where they are.
Other students prefer assessments that are more playful.
That, for me, is one of the things I'm not really successful in developing but
that's top of my mind to invest more in doing that to
have a more playful interaction in assessment.
Maybe also using parts from what we know from playing digital games.
It's a bit fashionable nowadays to talk about
gamification of teaching and gamification of assessment.
But I think, there is a way to go there and at Erasmus University,
we have some examples where that has been put into
practice and I think the results are promising.
Working with the Battle App, for example,
is a way to appeal to that kind of
playful dealing with the material you have to learn anyway.
But, we should also take into account that in many fields,
classic route learning is becoming less and less important.
I'm a bit traditional that I, in my teaching,
emphasize very much that they need to know many central concept theories,
et cetera, from the top of their heads.
So, that's the results in a kind of work learning.
But of course, the 21st century skills
they need to develop demand different things in addition to that,
and also, things that are a little more difficult
to assess because we don't have the toolbox ready.
But that's so nice for about working at a university at this particular moment in
time and I think we're making a move towards that kind of development.
Marit NieuwenhuysEducational Advisor
Remy FermontEducational Advisor
Mandy HollanderEducational Advisor
Kris StabelEducational Advisor
Sanne van HerpenEducational Advisor
Berry NijveldEducational Advisor
