Assessment for confidence: Exploring the impact that low-stakes assessment design has on student retention

Abstract

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Using the assessment process to overcome Imposter Syndrome in mature students

“…Is there a place in the curriculum for assessment purely for confidence building: Assessment for confidence (Meer and Chapman, 2014a)? Or one to help overcome the fear factor and help with settling in?…”

“…The timing and value of the assessment is important too. An early low-stakes assessment can be used to enhance confidence and self-efficacy (Meer & Chapman, 2014a). This can allow mistakes to be made but the consequences to be minimal.…”

Using a gamified mobile app to increase student engagement, retention and academic achievement

“…These include 'progression trees' , scoregenerated leaderboards, and digital badges (Abramovich, Schunn, & Higashi, 2013;Ahn, Pellicone, & Butler, 2014;Lokuge Dona, Gregory, & Pechenkina, 2016). Further, considering that low-stakes assessments offered early on in the teaching period build confidence and engagement, and, in turn, have a beneficial effect on retention (Meer & Chapman, 2014), delivered in a gamified format such assessments can make a mobile learning app more effective in its task (Weitze & Söbke, 2016).…”

Limitations of Corrective Feedforward: A Call for Resubmission Practices to become Learning-oriented

“…It may well be the case therefore that marks were used for encouragement more than being a legitimate attempt to re-grade the resubmission. Meer and Chapman (2014), for example, have written of the importance of building confidence through low-stakes assessment in the first year, where grade averages do not carry forward to final degree classification. Since there is no difference in a student's actual grade based on the notional resubmission mark, giving the impression of significant improvement might simply be an effort at repairing self-esteem to balance the experience of the original assignment failure.…”