Students' motives for using online formative assessments when preparing for summative assessments

Background: Formative assessments intend to provide feedback on student performance in order to improve and accelerate learning. Several studies have indicated that students using online formative assessments (OFAs), have better results on their exams. Aims: The present study aims to provide insight in student reasons for using or not using available OFAs. Method: Three OFAs with feedback were available in a second year undergraduate course in physiology for biomedical sciences students (N = 147). First, students received an open questionnaire about why they did (not) complete the first two OFAs. Based on this data, a closed questionnaire was developed and distributed among students. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was applied. Results: The results indicate reasons why students do (not) use the OFAs. The EFA for using the OFAs indicated three factors, that were interpreted as collecting (1) feed up, (2) feed forward, and (3) feed back information. The main reasons for not using the OFAs were lack of time and having completed the questions before. Conclusions: Students' reasons for using OFAs can be described in terms of collecting feed up, forward and back information and students' reasons for not using OFAs can be student-, teacher-, or mode-related.