Universities should design the assessment activities that could induce students to be deep learners instead of surface learners, and at the same time equip them with relevant soft skills. This paper aims to gain insight on students’ perception on the appropriateness of the assessment activities in developing soft skills of a management accounting subject at a public university in Malaysia. 420 usable questionnaires were collected out of 686 distributed to fourth semester students taking the said subject. Descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney U test were conducted to achieve the objective. Results revealed that students did not benefit much from test or quiz implying that such assessment does not turn students into deep learners as expected. On the other hand, group work and presentation do contribute to the development of soft skills. However, findings should not be generalized to other subjects.

Student assessment would influence the quality of the graduates produced. However, many assessment strategies are found to inhibit this intention. As such, this chapter proposes a few assessment activities, along with their practical implementation, that may encourage deep learning among students in the learning of management accounting subjects. This chapter reviews previous literature, focusing on the characteristics of effective assessment activities that suit the nature of the Millennial. Five assessment activities, namely test/quiz, case study, field study, simulated enterprise, and classroom activities, are proposed. A questionnaire evaluating the preferences of the students and lecturers on how the proposed activities could be implemented was adapted. The chapter elaborates on the practical implementation of the five proposed assessment activities believed to engage students' learning so they become deep learners. A future research project is also put forth.

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