Formative E-assessment Research Articles

Exploring the integration and utilisation of generative AI in formative e-assessments: A case study in higher education

Exploring the integration and utilisation of generative AI in formative e-assessments: A case study in higher education

Perception of the teacher trainees on the implementation of e-assessment in the selected Teacher Training Colleges in Kenya

The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) is currently implementing the integration of technology in conducting assessments to replace the traditional mode of paper and pen. The purpose of this study is to examine the perception of the teacher trainees towards the implementation of e-assessment in the upgrade course of the Diploma in Primary Teacher Education (UDPTE). The study adopted a descriptive research design and was carried out in two (2) public teacher training colleges with a target population of two hundred and forty (240) teacher trainees for the UDPTE programme. All the trainees in the sampled colleges were purposively selected to participate in the study since all of them had participated in the formative e-assessment. An online Teacher Trainees Questionnaire (TTQ) was used to collect information relating to trainees' perception of e-assessment. The reliability coefficient alpha (α) of TTQ was found to be 0.78 from the pilot study making the instrument valid for data collection. The data collected was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics by the use of SPSS software version 26.0. The study findings established that a significant number of teacher trainees were upgrading in Option B as compared to Option A learning areas. The teacher trainees believed that the best way to finance the Upgrade of Diploma in Primary Teacher Education program (UDPTE) in Kenya was by using bursaries or scholarships and not loans. A significant number of teacher trainees support the adoption of e-assessment but they are of the view that the colleges were not yet prepared due to lack of necessary technological infrastructure. It was further noted that the teacher trainees need more training on basic computer skills in order to improve their typing skills for responses to enhance the complete submission of assessments on the portal in their respective learning areas. The Ministry of Education needs to equip the teacher training colleges with the necessary technological infrastructure and continuously retool tutors on how to integrate technology tools in the assessment procedures.

Formative E-Assessment Design in Online Learning Environments

With the demand and significant prevalence of online learning, investigating the impacts of formative assessment designs on promoting student learning has never been more imperative than ever. The research compared the learning performance and engagement levels for a group of teachers who participated in two training workshops with the integration of two different formative e-assessment designs for their online professional development. Participants' learning of the introduced contents were assessed during the instructional process and their attitudes toward different formative e-assessment design strategies were also investigated. Research results indicated that different formative e-assessment designs made differences not only in students’ learning, engagement levels, and attitudes, but also in instructors’ behaviors in designing formative e-assessment for online synchronous instruction.

Defining Formative Electronic Assessment in Undergraduate Mathematics: A Reflective Approach

Formative electronic assessment of mathematics on the Learning Management System is unique. The purpose of this study was to delineate the process of formative assessment in mathematics through the students’ experiences during remote online learning. Formative assessment is part of learning and helps students to monitor their progress. Data were analysed by identifying themes from the narratives. It emerged that the e-assessments that are manually written and graded by the instructor were the best mode of assessment for undergraduate mathematics. With timely feedback, formative electronic assessment placed students in a position whereby they took more responsibility for their learning. As such, students had positive perceptions towards formative electronic assessment during remote e-learning and were prepared to proceed with it in future. The study concluded that while some students proclaimed to have the expertise in the use of e-assessments, most students did not have the expertise in using e-assessment tools, as formative e-assessments were not generally offered in other modules. Participants echoed the sentiments that instructor expertise in formative electronic assessment design should be unquestionable to promote enhanced mathematics assessments that should enable presenting the steps taken to arrive at the answers.

Formative E-Assessment: A Qualitative Study Based on Master’s Degrees

Formative assessment is a strategy that optimizes the learning process at any educational level, however its use is not very frequent as literature revision shows. In this paper, we analyse the use of formative assessment in online postgraduate studies (masters) in Spanish universities. Our sample was 31 online master’s degrees coordinators and we analyse the results obtained from a questionnaire with open questions using NVIVO software. Through qualitative analysis of the information supported by cross-queries of codes and attributes, we have considered formative assessment according to fields of knowledge, the type of digital tools used and the main difficulties identified. In this type of online masters, our data show that most of the teachers use this type of formative e-assessment to provide feedback to their students and as part of the final marks of the courses, too. So these results are relevant to understand the E-assessment strategies for master’s degrees. Finally, the main limitation of the study is the fact that it uses a sample limited to the geographical context of Spain. Nevertheless, these data are representative of E-assessment in Spanish master’s degrees and may be of interest for future research, for comparative studies in other contexts and even with face-to-face or blended-learning master’s degrees.

Impact of Formative E-Assessment on Attendance

E-assessment is an established and growing approach that can offer several advantages compared to traditional pen and paper assessments, such as instant feedback, online/remote interaction, and automated personalization. In this study, we investigate the impact of introducing formative e-assessment in a compulsory science module of an undergraduate degree programme. In particular, we compare two paired cohorts, from consecutive academic years, before and after replacing pen and paper formative assessment activities with digital alternatives based on the Numbas e-assessment platform. We find that introducing e￾assessment correlates with a marked and statistically significant increase in student attendance. Module evaluation comments from students indicate an overall view of e-assessment as beneficial and engaging.

A Scenario of the Formative E-assessment Based on the ARCS Model: What Is the Impact on Student Motivation in Educational Context?

The purpose of this research is to measure the motivation of nursing students, option: multi-skilled nurse (n=58), following their participation in an e-learning activity in the form of formative quizzes. The pedagogical scenario was based on Keller's ARCS motivation model.
 Data were collected through the IMMS questionnaire adopted from the ARCS model.
 The results show that the students were motivated by the e-learning activity (mean score = 4.22±, 51091), and that the motivation variables studied correlated positively with the overall motivation score (p-value < .001). 
 Through this research, it was found that an instructional scenario based on the ARCS model had a positive impact on students' motivation for e-learning, thus encouraging allied health educators to design educational tools that can motivate nursing students.

Formative e-Assessment for Moroccan Polyvalent Nurses Training: Effects and Challenges

Formative e-assessment is an innovative teaching practice to enhance learning. However, teachers encounter multiple difficulties in integrating it. In this article,we present the results of an exploratory study conducted with nurses teachers (n=10) to identify the challenges that prevent the integration of technology in formative assessment. Moreover,we expose the results of a learning experience in order to measure the effect of formative e-assessment on teaching the course of surgical nursing care. 
 Our population includes fifty-eight (n= 58) polyvalent student nurses, divided into two groups: an experimental group and a control group. Only the experimental group has been invited to respond to self-assessment quizzes posted online after the course sessions. 
 The positive effect on learning was demonstrated, after comparing the summative scores of the two groups (the p-value of the Mann-Whitney Test is less than 0.05). Also, the qualitative study has demonstrated challenges in ICT integration, absence of institutional directives recommending the use of ICT, required technical skills, diversity of tasks required of teachers, lack of material resources and absence of an institutional platform. The obtained results conclude that the formative evaluation facilitated by ICT positively influences the students’ summative scores. This conclusion should encourage 
 and motivate teachers to integrate ICT into their formative evaluation practices in order to better achieve the learning objectives. However, it seems necessary to involve the actors responsible for training nurses in order to support teachers in the pedagogical integration of ICT.

The Degree of Utilizing E-Assessment Techniques at Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University: Faculty Perspectives

Accomplishing higher education development entails the use of the available technological means and innovative teaching and evaluation methods. Further, developing modern techniques for assessment is integral for achieving the intended learning outcomes and enhancing the alumnus’ capabilities for meeting the digital era requirements. The current study thus aims to identify the degree of utilizing the techniques of e-assessment from the perspective of faculty members in the College of Education at Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. It also seeks to identify statistically significant differences in the participants’ responses due to gender, academic degree, and years of experience. The analytical descriptive approach was adopted and applied to a sample of 70 faculties at the College of Education, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University. A questionnaire was developed to include three domains: diagnostic e-assessment, formative e-assessment, and summative e-assessment. The findings demonstrated that there was a low degree of utilizing diagnostic e-assessment and a medium degree of utilizing both formative and summative e-assessments from faculty perspectives. In addition, there were no statistically significant differences in the participants’ responses due to gender, academic degree, and years of experience. The study recommends expanding the utilization of e-assessment techniques in Saudi universities and conducting scientific research to identify faculty members’ training needs in the field of e-assessment.

The effectiveness of formative assessment: student views and staff reflections

This article reports on the implementation of formative e-assessments in courses taken by first-year students. The central aim is to measure the effectiveness of the formative e-assessments with reference to the student voice and staff reflections. Students engaged with the formative assessments and the evidence gathered via questionnaires show that students perceived that formative e-assessments helped them to monitor their progress; encouraged further study and increased their learning and understanding. The findings also allowed academics to reflect on the benefits of adopting formative e-assessments to foster student engagement and permit early intervention. By focussing on the student view (rather than student performance) the findings add to our understanding of the benefits of integrating regular formative assessment in first-year courses.

Developing Formative e-Assessment as a Stimulus to Improve the Quality of Mathematical Methods for Physics Learning Process

Assessment is an important component of learning, one of the factors that affects quality and learning outcomes is the quality of the assessment held in the learning process. Innovation that can be done to support assessment formative is to utilize Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The aim of the research is to develop the formative e-assessment model, identify the needs of development and guidance to implement formative e-assessment model, arrange the model and guidance of formative e-assessment, and find out the beneficial of formative e-assessment towards mathematical method of physics learning. The development design used refers to the Research and Development Design of Borg & Gall which has been modified. The design consists of four phases; they are introduction study, model design, model developing, and model validation. The research involved several universities in East Java. The results gained from the validators of material expert were 3.32 and validator of media expert was 3.10; while the result of limited experiment was 3.27 and it was classified as good category.

Student’s Problem Solving Skills in Collaborative Inquiry Learning Supplemented by Formative E-Assessment : Case of Static Fluids

This research aims to analyze the development of the static fluid problem-solving skills of high school students in collaborative inquiry supplemented by formative e-assessment. This research used a mixed-method approach with the research design of an embedded experimental design model involving 34 students of class XI MIPA in SMA Negeri 4 Malang. The Data on the problem-solving skills were obtained through pretest and posttest using three problem-solving questions in the form of descriptions and supplemented by interviews. The calculation results of N-gain score showed the improvement of student’s problem solving skills for a moderate category and the calculation result of Cohen’s d-effect size in for strong effect category, as many as 79% of the students are categorized as experts. The expert students have good skills in the useful description indicator followed sequentially on the indicator of physics approach, specific application of physics, mathematical procedures, and logical proggression. Meanwhile, the novice students are only capable on the indicator of useful description and physics approach. Students’ skill to solve problems still need to be trained intensively using contectual problems in daily life.

Increasing Students’ Understanding in the Concept of Projectile Motion with Modelling Instruction Accompanied by Embedded Formative E-Assessment

This study aims to analyze the understanding of the concept of projectile motion of students in class X who studied with modeling instruction accompanied by embedded formative e-assessment. An embedded experimental design was used in this mixed method study. This study involved of 30 students of Malang public high school consisting of 12 male and 18 female students. The main instrument of this research was 9 materials (items) with multiple choice questions. N-gain and effect size analysis were carried out on the test results, while the student’ answers and reasons were analyzed qualitatively. The results showed that the average of pre-test value was 18.87 which increased to 49.93 in the post-test, the N-gain value was 0.50 (upper medium) and effect size was 2.09 with a category greater than the standard. This means that with modeling instruction accompanied by formative e-assessment could improve students’ understanding of the concept of projectile motion. It was also found that there is some difficulties in describing the direction of acceleration each time in moving an object with a parabolic path.

Analysis of Students’ Understanding of Motion in Straight Line Concepts: Modeling Instruction with Formative E-Assessment

Analysis of Students’ Understanding of Motion in Straight Line Concepts: Modeling Instruction with Formative E-Assessment

Formative E-Assessment and Behavioral Commitment of Students: Case of the Faculty of Science Ben M’sik

Digital technology contributes to the development of new teaching practices and a new assessment culture [1,2,3]. Various studies [4,5] show that digital technology facilitates the formative assessment process, an assessment mode that favors the learner’s commitment and encourages the learner to adopt an efficient learning method [6]. All the more, the media coverage of this type of assessment generates a large number of indicators enabling to analyze the behavioral commitment of students in their learning process.
 The objective of this study is to analyze the impact of formative E-assessment on the students’ behavioral commitment based on the digital traces of the students’ work, this traceability is considered a very important source permitting to find out about the students’ behavioral commitment. The assessment was achieved via the interactive Moodle platform, it was tested on a group of students from the Faculty of Sciences Ben M’sik in Casablanca, Morocco. The results of the experiment carried out for a period of two years (2015-2016 and 2017-2018) revealed that the majority of the students are committed to take the assessment test. We observed a real implication of the latter, where the action traces of the students in terms of participation and contribution could be collected and analyzed by the teacher for feedback purposes.

Measuring Learner Satisfaction with Formative e-Assessment Strategies

The student experience with different aspects of online instructional settings has been the focus of educational practitioners and researchers in many studies. However, concerning technology-enabled formative assessment, little is known about student satisfaction regarding different possible formative e-assessment strategies the students are involved in. Using a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire, a web-based survey was developed to examine students’ satisfaction with the formative e-assessment strategies within an enriched virtual blended course. The results show that, in general, the students were satisfied with the quality of their engagement and the quality of feedback across all the formative e-assessment activities offered. The results also show that the student satisfaction varied between and within the formative e-assessment strategies. However, the gap between the student satisfaction mean ratings across all formative e-assessment strategies was marginal and could not help researchers decide upon which formative e-assessment strategy that stood out as the most preferred one. Learner satisfaction with different formative e-assessment strategies was positively correlated to each other at various levels but no relationship was found between students’ scores on the final course exam and learner satisfaction with formative e-assessment strategies. In the end, the results indicated that a sustained and integrated use of the all three formative e-assessment strategies (online knowledge survey, online student-generated questions and peer-responses, and electronic reflective journals) should be used in the context of hybrid courses. The study also suggests further studies that would widen, diversify both the scope and research instruments to investigate learner satisfaction with formative e-assessment strategies.

Using e-assessment to support flipped-style teaching

We show how weekly formative e-assessments are used to support flipped-style teaching of a module delivered to all first year Mathematics students at the University of the West of England, Bristol (UWE). The flip lecture approach places students at the centre of the learning process. For the module described here, a highly scaffolded approach was employed. A workbook containing gapped lecture notes was created as well as a handbook containing exercise sheets and extra reading material. Each week students were expected to independently: watch screencasts and fill in the relevant gaps in their workbooks; take a formative e-assessment; try some basic questions from the exercise sheet and optionally do some extra reading and/or work through a Maple file. During the following two hour class, TurningPoint questions and group activities were used to encourage active learning. Student feedback of this new teaching approach has been very positive.

An integrated approach to encourage student-centered learning: A first course in dynamics

One of the most significant challenges facing Higher Education today is getting students to take responsibility for their own learning. In Science and Engineering this is complicated by the decline in the mathematical and problem solving skills of students entering university. Several techniques for addressing these issues have been applied to the Dynamics module on the first year Physics course at the University of Manchester over the last two years. These include the use of Just-in-Time Teaching, e-learning and e-assessment, interactive voting systems and peer instruction. We first encourage students to start to construct their own understanding via e-learning and then challenge their understanding during a lecture-based session using an interactive voting system. This is followed by more e-learning, which features formative e-assessment, and by a staff-supervised problem session using the Just-in-Time Teaching approach. Thus we have been able to improve student engagement with the course material and have achieved a significant improvement in examination performance. This paper will describe the implementation of the various new techniques and discuss their advantages and disadvantages.

Using teacher inquiry to support technology-enhanced formative assessment: a review of the literature to inform a new method

ABSTRACTIn this paper we review the literature on teacher inquiry (TI) to explore the possibility that this process can equip teachers to investigate students’ learning as a step towards the process of formative assessment. We draw a distinction between formative assessment and summative forms of assessment [CRELL. (2009). The transition to computer-based assessment: New approaches to skills assessment and implications for large-scale testing. In F. Scheuermann & J. Björnsson (Eds.), JRC Scientific and technical reports. Ispra: Author; Webb, M. (2010). Beginning teacher education and collaborative formative e-assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35, 597–618; EACEA. (2009). National testing of pupils in Europe: Objectives, organisation and use of results. Brussels: Eurydice; OECD. (2010b). Assessing the effects of ICT in education (F. Scheuermann & E. Pedró, Eds.). Paris: JRC, OECD]. Our review of TI is combined with a review of the research concerning the way that practices with technology can support the assessment process. We conclude with a comparison of TI and teacher design research from which we extract the characteristics for a method of TI that can be used to develop technology-enhanced formative assessment: teacher inquiry into student learning. In this review, our primary focus is upon enabling teachers to use technology effectively to inquire about their students’ learning progress.

E‐Assessment in a Limited‐Resources Dental School Using an Open‐Source Learning Management System

e-Assessment provides solutions to some problems encountered in dental students' evaluation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the experience of a limited-resources dental school with e-assessment provided through an open-source learning management system (LMS). Data about users' access and types of e-assessment activities at the Faculty of Dentistry, Alexandria University, Egypt, were obtained from the web-based LMS Moodle. A questionnaire developed to assess students' perceptions of the e-assessment was also sent to students registered in two courses (undergraduate and postgraduate) with the same instructor. The results showed that most e-courses at the school had one form of e-assessment (82%) and, of these, 16.7% had summative assessment activities. There were significant differences among departments in the number of e-courses with e-assessment. One-quarter of e-courses with e-assessment used Moodle quizzes. Of 285 students registered in the two courses that included the questionnaire, 170 responded (response rate=59.6%). The responding students positively perceived the impact of e-assessment on learning and its reliability and security, whereas technical issues and related stresses were negatively perceived. This study suggests that e-assessment can be used at minimal cost in dental schools with limited resources and large class sizes with the least demands on faculty members and teaching staff time. For these schools, an open-source LMS such as Moodle provides formative e-assessment not available otherwise and accommodates various question formats and varying levels of instructors' technical skills. These students seemed to have a positive impression of the e-assessment although technical problems and related stresses are issues that need to be addressed.