Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to provide input regarding the students’ perspectives on the assessment methods used in Higher Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education. Are traditional methods still effective? What are the students’ perspectives on the diverse evaluation methods in Higher Education? To answer these questions, the Educational Involvement Department of BEST (Board of European Students of Technology), a non-profit, non-governmental, non-political and non-representative student organization, organises BEST Symposia on Education, BSE (former Events on Education—EoEs), which aim to convene Higher Education stakeholders and raise the students’ engagement in Higher STEM Education. By performing a secondary data analysis of the students’ perspectives as they were expressed and recorded in EoE Gliwice (Manasova et al. in Be on the right track with SMART, learning - change the education of tomorrow!. Gliwice, 2016 [1]) and EoE Chania (Kloster Pedersen et al. in Refreshing education: update, rethink, grow. Chania, 2017 [2]) reports, the current study shows that laboratory settings are supportive for combining the three most preferred learning techniques: discussion groups, practicing by doing and teaching others/immediate use. Moreover, it was concluded that the assessment on every evaluation system should combine the students’ attitude in class and feedback from professors. Final exams no longer appeal to students and cannot reflect the knowledge and skill set obtained. Professors, universities and particularly educational policymakers should consider the students’ needs both when formulating a fair assessment system and creating/updating academic curricula.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Edglossary.org.: https://www.edglossary.org/assessment/.
- 2.
- 3.
For the TiT sessions the students were divided in four teams, each one representing a hypothetical institution with a given number of problems (six, in this case). The students were responsible to present improvement points, following brainstorming and debating practices.
References
Manasova, D., Merlier, A., Guliaeva, A., Wippich, A., Trajkovikj, N.: Be on the right track with SMART, learning—change the education of tomorrow!. In: BEST Event on Education 2016, 21–31 July 2016. Gliwice, Poland (2016). https://issuu.com/bestorg/docs/eoe-gliwice
Kloster Pedersen, L., Sobrino Verde, C., Churyło, K., Pasovic, D.: Refreshing education: update, rethink, grow. In: BEST Event on Education 2017, 12–21 July 2017. Chania, Greece (2017). https://issuu.com/bestorg/docs/eoe_chania_2017
Johnston, H.: Proficiency-based education. Retrieved from ERIC database (ED538827) (2011)
James, R.: Academic standards and the assessment of student learning: some current issues in Australian higher education. Tert. Educ. Manag. 9(3), 187–198 (2010)
Struyven, K., Dochy, F., Janssens, S.: Students’ perceptions about assessment in higher education: a review. In: Joint Northumbria/Earli SIG Assessment and Evaluation Conference: Learning communities and assessment cultures, University of Northumbria at Newcastle, Longhirst Campus, 28–30 Aug 2002
Hattie, J.: The black box of tertiary assessment: An impending revolution. In: Meyer, L.H., Davidson, S., Anderson, H., Fletcher, R., Johnston, P.M., Rees, M.(eds.) Tertiary Assessment and Higher Education Student Outcomes: Policy, Practice and Research, pp. 259–275. Ako Aotearoa & Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, NZ (2009)
Drew, S.: Perceptions of what helps learn and develop in education. Teach. High. Educ. 6(3), 309–331 (2001)
Messick, S.: Validity. In: Linn, R.L. (ed.) (1993) Educational Measurement, 3, pp. 13–103. American Council on Education/Macmillan, New York, NY (1989)
Gyll, S., Ragland, S.: Improving the validity of objective assessment in higher education: steps for building a best-in-class competency-based assessment program. J. Compet.-Based Educ. 3, e01058 (2018)
McAlpine, M.: Principles of Assessment. CAA Centre, University of Luton, Luton (2002)
Sambell, K., McDowell, L., Brown, S.: ‘But is it fair?’: an exploratory study of student perceptions of the consequential validity of assessment. Stud. Educ. Eval. 23(4), 349–371 (1997)
Sambell, K., McDowell, L., Montgomery, C.: Assessment for Learning in Higher Education, pp. 10–11. Routledge, Milton Park (2012)
Bryman, A.: Social research methods, 4th edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2012)
Adamson, B., Morris, P.: Comparing curricula. In: Bray, M., Adamson, B., Mason, M. (eds.) Comparative Education Research: Approaches and Methods, pp. 263–283. The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Antera, S., Costa, R., Kalfa, V., Mendes, P. (2019). Assessment in Higher STEM Education: The Now and the Future from the Students’ Perspective. In: Auer, M., Tsiatsos, T. (eds) The Challenges of the Digital Transformation in Education. ICL 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 917. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11935-5_73
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11935-5_73
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-11934-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-11935-5
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)