New Perspectives in Science Education

The increased interest in assessment in higher education, especially after the milestone studies of Boud and Falchikov (2007), has enhanced the importance of self-assessment, which has been considered an effective way for students to achieve self-monitoring and judging their own learning progression. In this process, students reflect and assess the quality of their learning, express a judgment on assessment criteria and learning goals, identify their strengths and weakness point and modify what they are doing. This paper focuses on self-assessment practices in the higher education field with an attempted to look into how students monitor and manage their learning. The study has been conducted during the fall semester of 2018 with one cohort of undergraduate education students. Two sections of an education course were taught by the same instructor. Both sections were provided with identical lecture materials, in-class worksheets, in-class assessments; the main difference was in the way chapters were revised—online self-assessment test for one section, and chapter revision notes for the other. When the performance of the mid-term exam grades in two sections was compared, the analysis revealed that students who did the online self-assessment tests did significantly better than the students who practiced the revision notes. An anonymous survey evaluating the effect of self-assessment, suggested that it has been recognized by the students as a sine qua non condition for the development of effective learning, and it helped them to increase self-regulation of learning because it provided students with opportunities to practice regulating aspects of their own learning and to reflect on that practice and learning progression.

Keywords: higher education, monitoring learning; self-assessment,  self-reflection.

References:
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