Abstract
The acquisition of domain-specific knowledge and interdisciplinary skills such as critical thinking is increasingly gaining significance as key learning outcomes in higher education that are crucial for all professionals and engaged citizens and that enable lifelong learning. Despite this socio-political consensus, up until the last decade there have only been a few evidence-based insights into the competencies of higher education students. Therefore, the Germany-wide research program Modelling and Measuring Competencies in Higher Education (KoKoHs) was established in 2011 by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. In the 85 projects, theoretical-conceptual competence models and corresponding assessments were developed for selected large study domains (e.g. economics) to reliably measure the students’ competencies in different phases of higher education (entering, undergraduate, graduate). More than 100 technology-based assessments of both discipline-specific competencies and generic skills were validated across Germany at over 350 universities with over 75,000 students. This article presents findings from the Germany-wide entry diagnostics in the one KoKoHs project (WiWiKom II) with beginning students in business, economic and social sciences that provide evidence-based insights into students’ learning preconditions and their impact on domain-specific knowledge acquisition in bachelor’s degree courses. The results lead to far-reaching practical implications for successful transitions between secondary and tertiary education, including recommendations for the development of mechanisms to support access to tertiary education and to prevent high dropout rates.
Highlights
The acquisition of domain-specific knowledge and interdisciplinary skills such as critical thinking is increasingly gaining significance as key learning outcomes in higher education that are crucial for all professionals and engaged citizens and that enable lifelong learning
Many degree programmes are characterized by extremely high dropout rates (Heublein et al 2010, Heublein 2014; Federal Statistical Office 2017; OECD 2010, 2018)
To demonstrate the potentials of entrance testing of student learning preconditions in higher education, the research questions (RQs) are examined on the basis of one of the KoKoHs projects: the WiWiKom II study
Summary
The acquisition of domain-specific knowledge and interdisciplinary skills such as critical thinking is increasingly gaining significance as key learning outcomes in higher education that are crucial for all professionals and engaged citizens and that enable lifelong learning. A particular challenge in higher education as described by Shepard and colleagues (2018) is that the programme designs, instructional activities, and assessment strategies commonly used in higher education do not lead to the desired student learning outcomes This was one of the focal points of the Germany-wide large-scale research program Modelling and Measuring Competencies in Higher Education (KoKoHs), which was established by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in 2011 (for an overview, see Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al 2017; ZlatkinTroitschanskaia et al 2020). The presented findings from the Germany-wide entry diagnostics provide important evidence-based insights into students’ preconditions and lead to far-reaching practical implications for successful transitions between secondary and tertiary education This includes recommendations for the development of mechanisms to support access to tertiary education and to prevent high dropout rates. The teams of the KoKoHs projects assessed more than 85,000 students at over 350 higher education institutions across Germany; approximately one third of the test takers were beginning students in the study domains of business, economic and social sciences (ZlatkinTroitschanskaia et al 2020)
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