Systematic Comparison of Decision Accuracy of Complex Compensatory Decision Rules Combining Multiple Tests in a Higher Education Context

Self Cite

Despite the benefits swift academic progress holds for many stakeholders, there is scarce literature on how academic progress may be improved by changes to assessment policies. Therefore, we investigated academic progress of first-year students after an alteration of characteristics of the assessment policies in three large course programmes: business administration (n ¼ 2048) changed the stakes; medicine (n ¼ 1630) changed the stakes and performance standard; psychology (n ¼ 1076) changed the stakes, performance standard and resit standard. Results indicate that students' academic progress was sensitive to the characteristics of the assessment policy in all three course programmes. The changes in progress could be explained by differences in performance, as well as by differences in selection for progress by the different policies. Implications are that assessment policies seem effective in shaping student progress, although one size does not fit all.

Section: Performance Standardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Performance Standardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment policies and academic progress: differences in performance and selection for progress

Kickert

Meeuwisse

Arends

et al. 2020

Self Cite

“…Firstly, providing more resit opportunities has been associated with lower performance on the initial assessment, although more resit opportunities were not associated with differences in final grades (Grabe 1994). Secondly, a resit is an extra opportunity to pass an assessment by chance (Yocarini et al 2018). Thirdly, resits may offer an unfair advantage to the resit students, for instance due to additional practice opportunities (Pell, Boursicot, and Roberts 2009).…”

Section: Assessment Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment policies and academic performance within a single course: the role of motivation and self-regulation

Kickert

Meeuwisse

Stegers‐Jager

et al. 2019

Despite the frequently reported association of characteristics of assessment policies with academic performance, the mechanisms through which these policies affect performance are largely unknown. Therefore, the current research investigated performance, motivation and self-regulation for two groups of students following the same statistics course, but under two assessment policies: education and child studies (ECS) students studied under an assessment policy with relatively higher stakes, a higher performance standard and a lower resit standard, compared with Psychology students. Results show similar initial performance, but more use of resits and higher final performance (post-resit) under the ECS policy compared with the psychology policy. In terms of motivation and self-regulation, under the ECS policy significantly higher minimum grade goals, performance self-efficacy, task value, time and study environment management, and test anxiety were observed, but there were no significant differences in aimed grade goals, academic self-efficacy and effort regulation. The relations of motivational and selfregulatory factors with academic performance were similar between both assessment policies. Thus, educators should be keenly aware of how characteristics of assessment policies are related to students' motivation, self-regulation and academic performance.

“…Rather, there are some conjunctive aspects included in which a minimum level of performance is required. Previous research, in which the argument that the average grade is more reliable was evaluated, shows that the required minimum grade is also important for the accuracy of the compensatory rule (Yocarini et al 2018). Furthermore, the results of this study show that the accuracy of a compensatory decision rule relative to a conjunctive decision rule depends on the test reliabilities, correlation between tests, and the number of resits allowed.…”

Section: Allowing Course Compensationmentioning

confidence: 54%

Allowing course compensation in higher education: a latent class regression analysis to evaluate performance on a follow-up course

Yocarini

Bouwmeester

Smeets

et al. 2019

Self Cite

In this study, the consequences of allowing course compensation in a higher education academic dismissal policy are evaluated by examining performance on a second-year follow-up (i.e. sequel) course that builds on material from a first-year precursor course. Up to now, differences in the consequences of compensation on student performance across groups of students who portray different unobserved study processes were not considered. In this study we used a latent class regression model to distinguish latent groups of students. Data from two undergraduate curricula were used and latent classes were formed based on similar patterns in averages, variability in grades, the number of compensated courses, and the number of retakes in the first year. Results show that students can be distinguished by three latent classes. Although the first-year precursor course is compensated in each of these latent classes, low performance on the precursor course results in low performance on the second-year sequel course for psychology students who belong to a class in which the average across first-year courses is low and the average number of compensated courses and retakes are high. For these students, compensation on a precursor course seems more likely to relate to insufficient performance on a sequel course.