Assessment Preference of Higher Education Students

Problem Statement: Teaching the content and assessing the level of success are two processes that complement and influence each other in a two dimensional way. Furthermore, selected evaluation methods facilitate students' approachers to content and affect their level of understanding, thus supporting students in gaining higher order thinking skills. For this reason, considering students' assessment preferences may be a key factor for academic achievement. Purpose of the Study: From this prespective, the purpose of this study was to expose the assessment preferences of higher education students. Method: This research study is a "causal-comparative study." The main research question that directed this research was: "What are the assessment preferences of higher education students?" The general overview of the student profile and the differences between deparments and grade levels was questioned. The study involved a total of 476 higher education students from six different departments of the Faculty of Education of a private university who voluntarily participated in this study. Purposive stratified sampling was used to collect date. The data was then analyzed using MANOVA. Findings and Results: The findings indicated that higher education students prefer alternative assessment methods, namely "formative assessment," which leads to deepar learning. Placing importance on the "self-concept" by higher education students also emerged as an important dimension of the findings. Conclusions and Recommendations: These two key points lead us to the conclusion that "higher education students want from their instructors an approach taking into consideration individual differences, not only in the teaching-learning process, but also in the assessment process." The study revealed than the students are more likely to employ surface learning approaches when preparing for their examinations and deep learning approaches when writing their assignment essays, and have a clear preference for assessment by assignment essays, rather than examinations. The findings of this study also indicated that the assignment essay gave the students a chance (a) to look critically at the reading and information in depth, (b) to provide enough time to develop and improve writing skills, and (c) to enable them to narrow their research and extend reading into the topics they were interested in.