Necessity of assessment and how it affects students' psyche and desire to learn: innovative digital technologies for assessment of art and music teaching in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper studies the use of innovative digital technologies to assess art and music creative works in China. The authors of the paper conducted an experimental study of the influence of various types of assessment, such as formative and summative, on the academic motivation and mental health of artists and musicians. The study involved second-year students from Xihua University (N = 548). The researchers used the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) and the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) as psychometric tools of the standardized methods. Summarizing the results obtained, they can conclude that summative assessment stimulates external motivation, while formative assessment contributes to the development of internal motivation of students. These results allow teachers to offer different types of assessment to strengthen a certain type of students’ motivation. The researchers also found that summative assessment could result in a higher level of amotivation. However, they did not confirm the assumption about the negative impact of summative assessment on the mental state of students.