Student ‘voice’ and higher education assessment: is it all about the money?

Abstract

University administered Student Evaluation of Teaching surveys, while used primarily by educators and their managers to review and improve the quality of courses and teaching, can also be used by universities’ marketing campaigns and websites as a means of stressing their institution’s student friendliness and responsiveness to students’ needs. Changes in assessment practices is one way that tertiary institutions are responding to students’ preferences. However, there is a lack of understanding of the underlying factors that moderate decisions about assessment changes. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not a meaningful body of research concerning student ‘choice’ in higher education assessment exists, and how the extent of student ‘choice’ may change in the future. Emphasis has been placed on the assessment methods adopted in law and professional degrees in Australia. However, a broad review of international research from other relevant higher education discipline areas has also been undertaken in this paper.