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Open Conference on Computers in Education

OCCE 2021: Digital Transformation of Education and Learning - Past, Present and Future pp 261–273Cite as

What Kind of E-assessment Feedback Is Important to Students? An Empirical Study

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Part of the IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology book series (IFIPAICT,volume 642)

Abstract

E-assessment needs to provide detailed feedback that students would use. To this end, the content of feedback should include assessment information that is important to students. By using a convenient sample of twenty second-year undergraduate students, this study explored the extent to which different kinds of assessment feedback were important to students. Therefore, an online questionnaire was administered which, apart from asking values of some background variables including academic achievement, listed a number of different feedback techniques supporting activities applied in deep and strategic approaches to learning and studying. For each technique, students had to indicate the extent of the importance they assigned to it. It was found that: (1) although feedback techniques supporting a deep approach were as important to students as those supporting a strategic approach, the importance of the former was positively related to that of the latter; (2) feedback techniques supporting a deep approach were more important to females than males; (3) when the importance of all these feedback techniques together was considered in a specific way, their relevance to an increase in students’ knowledge, skills and motivation could be demonstrated. Although this study used a small sample that might characterise it as preliminary research, it revealed valuable findings, which due to their considerable effect size, make the sample size less questionable. Suggestions for further research are included.

Keywords

  • E-assessment
  • Feedback
  • Language learning
  • Learning approach
  • Undergraduate students

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  • DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-97986-7_22
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Notes

  1. 1.

    A learning object is a specifically designed, modular unit of a learning resource – content items, practice items, and assessment items that are combined based on a single learning objective.

  2. 2.

    GMFTs importance and Gender correlated (−0.471, df = 18, p = 0.036). Relevant partial correlations concerning GMFTs importance controlling for Gender were: 0.637, df = 17, p = 0.003 (with Course achievement); 0.444, df = 17, p = 0.057 (with Academic achievement); 0.637, df = 17, p = 0.003 (with E-assessment participation).

  3. 3.

    The mean of absolute difference between the responses to these item-pairs was calculated for each participant (e.g., [15]), and the mean and standard deviation of this measure were 1.86 and 1.37, respectively. Furthermore, the measure positively correlated with Course achievement (0.574, df = 18, p = 0.008), meaning that participants with lower course achievement responded to adjacent item-pairs in a more similar way [22].

  4. 4.

    The medians of D5 importance, DAFTs4 importance (the remaining four DAFTs), FTs9 importance (the remaining nine FTs) were 6.66, 7.58, and 7.42, respectively. Their differences in question were significant: D5 importance – DAFTs4 importance: z = –3.286, p = 0.000; D5 importance – FTs9 importance: z = –2.688, p = 0.005. D5 importance was of high reliability by applying correction for attenuation (e.g., [23]).

  5. 5.

    As expected, E-assessment participation was positively related to achievement (see Table 2; χ2 = 5.051, df = 1, p = 0.025 for both achievement variables).

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Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank all students who participated in this study. The research done by the first and third authors was funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia (Contract No. 451-03-68/2022-14/200018).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Educational Research, Belgrade, Serbia

    Djordje M. Kadijevich & Nikoleta Gutvajn

  2. Faculty of Information Technologies, Belgrade Metropolitan University, Belgrade, Serbia

    Danijela Ljubojevic

Authors
  1. Djordje M. Kadijevich
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  2. Danijela Ljubojevic
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  3. Nikoleta Gutvajn
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Djordje M. Kadijevich .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

    Prof. Don Passey

  2. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Prof. Denise Leahy

  3. Technology, Pedagogy and Education Association, London, UK

    Lawrence Williams

  4. Samtaim Ltd., Helsinki, Finland

    Jaana Holvikivi

  5. University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

    Mikko Ruohonen

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Kadijevich, D.M., Ljubojevic, D., Gutvajn, N. (2022). What Kind of E-assessment Feedback Is Important to Students? An Empirical Study. In: Passey, D., Leahy, D., Williams, L., Holvikivi, J., Ruohonen, M. (eds) Digital Transformation of Education and Learning - Past, Present and Future. OCCE 2021. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 642. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97986-7_22

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