What are we missing? Spanish lecturers’ perceptions of their assessment practices

Abstract

Many studies have explored alternative assessment practices that focus on students and their learning. In this paper, we present a survey study that analyses lecturers’ perceptions of their assessment practices. Special attention is paid to assessment tasks developed to monitor student learning and those designed to promote active student participation in the assessment process. Lecturers’ perceptions of the importance, perceived competence and implementation of such assessment tasks are considered throughout the paper. Responses showed that lecturers assigned importance to the monitoring of student learning and felt reasonably capable of implementing assessment tasks for that purpose. Much less importance was placed on student participation in such assessments; lecturers perceived their abilities to implement assessment tasks to promote student participation to be poor and they rarely used such tasks.

Keywords:

• assessment in higher education
• peer assessment
• self-assessment
• feedback
• student participation
• progress monitoring

Acknowledgements

This study was made possible by the Re-Evalúa Research project [Ref. P08-SEJ-03502], funded by Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresa de la Junta de Andalucía. Thanks to Professor David Nicol for useful comments and clarifications.