Attitude towards e-assessment: influence of gender, computer usage and level of education

ABSTRACT

With astounding developments in online systems and education came the need for e-assessments of various forms. Despite plenty of studies about attitude towards computer-based and online education, attitude towards online assessment needs more focus due to scant research carried out. For this end, an e-assessment scale was used with a sample of 853 associate degree, undergraduate and graduate students to investigate the influence of gender, computer usage and level of education on attitude towards e-assessment. A mimic modelling approach was utilised following a confirmatory factor analysis, and the analysis found university students who used computers for a longer period of time had significantly higher scores on two e-assessment dimensions than those who used computers less. Males exhibited significantly more positive attitudes to e-assessment than females on test characteristics, individual characteristics and technical factors but not social and environmental factors. Level of education had no influence on attitude towards e-assessment.

KEYWORDS:

• Computer literacy
• gender
• confirmatory factor analysis
• higher education
• online assessment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mustafa Bahar

Dr Mustafa Bahar is an educational assessment professional at International Burch University, Sarajevo, focusing on language assessment, effective schooling and academic achievement. Email: [email protected]

Mustafa Asil

Dr Mustafa Asil is a research fellow at the University of Otago, Dunedin. His research interests focus on comparability of large scale assessments across languages and cultures, measurement equivalence and structural equation modelling. Email: [email protected]