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Adapting Spanish curricula to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) implies the introduction of continuous assessment. Continuous assessment is generally considered to enhance students' learning. The new methodology contrasts with the traditional Spanish method of assessment, based only on exams. This paper compares the student's learning under...
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... The advantage most emphasized in the literature is the feedback that CA offers to students and teachers [11,12,14,15]. Lopez-Tocón [16] found that Moodle quizzes let the Mathematics 2022, 10, 3994 2 of 21 teachers know failures in the students' understanding as well as information about students' learning processes while students are provided with self-assessment from the quizzes. ...
... Bloxham and Boyd [10] warn of strategic students who avoid making an effort in activities that do not contribute to their marks. Moreover, it has been reported [14,23] that students reduce their work once they obtain a satisfactory mark in their CA part and this attitude has consequences on the final exam. Finally, Dejene [20] found that some students perceive the CA as "continuous testing" that makes them busy and tired. ...
... Another drawback of the CA lies in an increase in the workload for teachers, as well as the time required to plan and mark the CA [10,12,24], especially in large groups where individualized attention is highly time-consuming for teachers [14,18,20]. Deeley et al. [18] describe how staff could feel demotivated when their feedback is not taken into consideration by their students whereas the students feel disengaged when feedback does not provide clear and personalized information. ...
Since the Bologna Process was adopted, continuous assessment has been a cornerstone in the curriculum of most of the courses in the different degrees offered by the Spanish Universities. Continuous assessment plays an important role in both students’ and lecturers’ academic lives. In this study, we analyze the effect of the continuous assessment on the performance of the students in their final exams in courses of Statistics at the University of Almería. Specifically, we study if the performance of a student in the continuous assessment determines the score obtained in the final exam of the course in such a way that this score can be predicted in advance using the continuous assessment performance as an explanatory variable. After using and comparing some powerful statistical procedures, such as linear, quantile and logistic regression, artificial neural networks and Bayesian networks, we conclude that, while the fact that a student passes or fails the final exam can be properly predicted, a more detailed forecast about the grade obtained is not possible.
... In continuous assessment, moreover, frequent practicing of applied exercises similar to those proposed on exams improves motivation, increasing learning and success rates of students [3]. As a result, positive correlation is generally found between continuous assessment and student achievement [33]. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic situation in 2020 forced educational institutions worldwide to fully adopt online learning for both teaching and assessment. However, this change may lead to less satisfactory learning outcomes, if the online technologies used have not been adequately applied. This study compares student engagement and performance through online continuous assessment in a one-semester structural analysis course for undergraduate architecture students before and after the pandemic outbreak. Online continuous assessment assignments had already been deployed and validated in the course evaluation system before the outbreak, and they were further leveraged during the online course. These assignments consisted of three weekly Moodle questionnaires throughout each of the fifteen course weeks, which determined the continuous assessment score. More than 200 students participated in each period. The results showed that shifting to online education affected continuous assessment outcomes very little in terms of participation rates and student performance. The possible underlying causes for the slight differences found between the two academic years are also discussed. The results highlight the robustness of the continuous assessment method used and emphasize the importance of having developed and validated online learning procedures to broach learning activities if contingency situations are required.
... The analysis of the temporal evolution of the evaluative activities of a course is a well established subject [7]. Following a long tradition in education analysis [2,4], we use the rate of students passing the course as our primary measure of production. ...
The first programming course (Programming-1, CS1) in the Informatics Engineering Degree of the Facultat d’Informàtica de Barcelona was completely redesigned in 2006 in order to reinforce the learn-by-doing methodology. Along the following eight years several pedagogical measures —mostly related with continous assessment— were introduced with the aim of increasing the pass rate of the course without lowering its high quality standards. This paper analyzes to what extent the added workload on faculty entailed by these measures affects the pass rate. We use a classical marginal cost-benefit approach —from Economics— to compare these two values along time. This process allows us to relate the evolution of the pass rate of students with the workload of the faculty through a productivity curve, as well as to assess the impact of each pedagogical measure. We conclude that, for this course, continuous assessment is expensive. In fact, abstracting from short term oscillations, the slope of the productivity curve is close to zero.
Continuous assessment is an assessment methodology whose objective is to assess students on an ongoing basis. However, designing, organizing, correcting, and evaluating continuous assessment increases the workload of teachers. Moreover, this methodology may not promote deep learning if it is not implemented properly. In this study, we implemented continuous assessment in an undergraduate programming subject using an automated assessment tool to reduce the workload of professors. We used design‐based research (DBR) to implement a prototype of assessment methodology which includes an automated assessment tool developed by our research group. DBR provides us with a scientific background for this implementation through an iterative process in which we progressively come to assess all the activities that students perform in the course. In the different iterations of this process, we have collected students' final and project grades, and their opinions through surveys about the assessments we have implemented. These results allow us to demonstrate that the performance of at least two types of students improves after the implementation of continuous assessment, while at the same time, the depth of learning in the class is not affected. We have also found that students are more motivated and committed to the course when continuous assessment is used as they prefer automated assessment over the traditional exercises. In addition, the implementation of the continuous assessment has shown us some unexpected outcomes about flexibility in methodology design, collection of large amounts of data from the learning process, and students acquiring useful skills for programming. In reality, this can result in students gaining deeper knowledge if they are confronted with a greater number of situations during this time in which they test their knowledge.
Chemical Engineering taught as a subject across three Energy Engineering-based degree streams was evaluated considering two cohorts in two consecutive years after the implementation of the Bologna Process in Spain. A regular continuous assessment methodology yielded negative results during the first year. Student insight on course development, own expectations and results, and the evaluation system were then explored via a 33-item survey with participation levels between 41% and 82%. Direct answers were evaluated including rank correlations between all items. The 465 correlation coefficients obtained showed stimulating and unanticipated results. For example, it was shown that a severe grading process (external blame-assignment) was only identified as an explanation for a low mark by those students who performed most poorly in the subject and, therefore, had a poorer understanding of the materials.
Besides, the feedback received from students was used to implement several changes in both the teaching practice and the assessment method during the second year, such as incorporating exam-like problems in daily classes and setting two midterm exams instead of the final one. The results registered after the second year pointed to substantial progress in student learning. Pass rates also rose from a 30% in the first academic year to 49% and 58% in the two following ones.
The first course on programming is fundamental in the Facultat d'Inform atica de Barcelona. After a major redesign of the Programming-1 course in 2006 to give it a more practical flavor, an increasing number of measures have been undertaken over the years to try to increase its paß rate while maintaining a fixed quality level. These measures, that can be roughly summarized as an important increase in aßeßment, imply an increase in the workload of both students and instructors that does not always correspond to the increase of paß rate they provide. In this paper, and within the context of this course, we analyze quantitatively the amount of work required from faculty to implement the series of measures and we conclude that, within this course, continuous aßeßment is expensive and has reached its limit.
