Assessment is viewed as an internal and pivotal part of learning, where cultural factors, previous experiences, and future aspirations affect learners’ perceptions. In recent years, an increasing number of western universities have established their campuses or “dual” programmes in China. In the first Sino–Finnish programme, 293 Finnish and Chinese students participated in the same English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course. This study investigated students’ perceptions of assessment through an adapted version of the “Students’ Conceptions of Assessment” inventory, and it explored if the responses on each conception differ between the groups. The self-report inventory included statements based on four main conceptions of assessment: improvement, external factors, affect/benefit, and irrelevance, while open-ended questions were also included. The analysis of the open-ended questions raised the issues of teacher fairness, learner autonomy, and feedback. Additionally, differences appeared between the role of assessment and its relation to future aspirations, as well as the role of the parents. This study is a starting point for exploring the conceptions for distinct groups of students regarding assessment, providing a better understanding of students’ perceptions and discussing the implications for the language classroom.
"The Medical English course at the University of Oulu (Finland), which is compulsory for 200 first-year medical students, is designed to enhance professional English language communication focusing on work life relevance. The course design utilized the action-oriented approach promoted by CEFR CV (2018), to support the active use of language through various simulation activities. This paper describes specifically the final assignment of the Medical English course, which is integrated with the Clinical Psychology course. Having discussed topics in Finnish in groups, complementing the lectures in the Clinical Psychology course, students present in English what they have learnt in these discussions in the framework of a student conference. While preparing for the conference, the students create a poster presentation in teams. During the conference, they present the posters and, thus, practice communication relevant to work life. In this assignment, they must actively apply cross-linguistic mediation and use mediation strategies to explain new concepts and simplify the source text. Traditionally, the assignment requires students to participate in a simulated real-time face to-face conference both as presenters and attendees. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we used an alternative solution: a hybrid conference of asynchronous presentations with real-time Q&A forums in online posts. The new design similarly provides students with stimuli to activate all modes of communication (production, reception, interaction and mediation) simultaneously. This article reports on this novel solution for the assignment together with its context and the course design in relation to mediation scales and descriptors. Moreover, an analysis of the self-assessment forms between the student cohorts in 2019 and 2020 allows an insight into the learners’ experiences. The results show that students perceive the assignment as an authentic communication task, which enhances their engagement and autonomy in the learning process."
Due to the dissemination of joint degree programmes in higher education, more students from different educational backgrounds are exposed to the same teaching and assessment without sharing a common pedagogical culture. Since this is relatively new in Finland, little is known about how students with diverse backgrounds experience assessment compared to their Finnish classmates and how this affects their overall performance. Having as a starting point an English for Specific Purposes course offered in Finland and China, this qualitative study focuses on the role of feedback through seventeen in-depth interviews. Themes such as grades and peer feedback were interpreted based on the educational background to which the students have been previously exposed. These findings indicate that the teacher should be aware of their previous pedagogical experiences and how these affect feedback in the classroom. Additionally, peer feedback needs to be addressed explicitly by the teacher during the lessons and create more scaffolding opportunities to avoid potential misinterpretations.
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