TRADITIONAL ASSESSMENT OF LEARNING VERSUS ONLINE ASSESSMENT

Abstract

Assessment not only measures progress but also help e-instructors to identify effective assessment strategies. Online courses make possible new forms of working and learning together that would be difficult to use in the classroom-based course. Also, high quality formative assessment has a positive effect on student learning. The present study aims to investigate differences between online evaluation of learning and traditional evaluation. We also investigated the association between the various forms of evaluation, test anxiety and self-efficacy. The participants were undergraduate students at the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, enrolled in online Moodle courses and non-enrolled students. For an entire semester, the students enrolled in online Moodle courses and completed in the Moodle format quizzes, as an instrument of formative assessment. For the non-enrolled sample, the evaluation was administered in a paper-pencil format, the traditional version. We used three scales; two of them were adapted from MSLQ (The Motivated Strategies for Learning Scale): - The Test Anxiety Scale (adapted from MSLQ) - The Academic Self Efficacy scale (adapted from MSLQ) - Attitudes towards online assessment scale The first two scales were administered before a formative assessment test for the subject matter Essential of psychological testing. The test was a 35 items quiz. The quiz was administered online using Moodle format for one group of students, and paper pencil for the second group. The content of the quiz was the same for both groups. The online students received after the test a third questionnaire regarding their satisfaction with the online assessment format. The results showed that there are no differences regarding the academic performances (the grades at the test) between the two groups of students, but the test anxiety and the self-efficacy were different, online students reporting higher levels of anxiety before taking the test and lower levels of self-efficacy. Although at the end of the test, online students reported a high satisfaction for the online assessment. The final questionnaire includes items such as: "My level of computer literacy limited my performance in the online assessment", "I felt under pressure taking the exam this way", "I enjoyed the exam process", "I would rather take the traditional exam, if I can choose". The results can be used in the implementation of future assessment methods, in order to reduce the test anxiety and to increase academic self-efficacy.