Abstract
Despite many articles written about assessment in higher education, surprisingly few have examined students’ emotional responses to assessment and their perceptions of this impact on their learning experiences and well-being. This article reports on a study using in-depth interviews with 40 undergraduate students who were frequently graded. A range of emotions was reported. However, responses were overwhelmingly negative and included annoyance, frustration and disappointment. These emotions were often a response to the assessment practices, such as the timing and weighting of assessments rather than to the assessment itself. When assessment loads were too high, students reported making sacrifices with respect to learning and student life. Students also reported negative emotions when assessment was perceived as meaningless, or recognised as detrimental to learning. We argue that when considering assessment practices, educators should ask questions about the emotional impact of assessment to ensure learning while also taking into account the importance of student well-being.
Emotions and assessment
Assessment is a central tenet of student learning as it drives what, how and how much students study (Gibbs and Simpson, 2005). Although there is a plethora of research on assessment, less attention has been given to students’ emotional experiences of assessment to ensure that their emotional reaction optimises, rather than inhibits, learning outcomes (Bevitt, 2015; Rowe et al., 2015; Su and Chung, 2015). It is widely recognised that emotions are important determinants of successful student outcomes (Rowe et al., 2015; Su and Chung, 2015). Positive emotions, such as feelings of success, have the potential to assist learning through increases in self-efficacy and motivation (Kahu et al., 2015) and have been shown to influence approaches students take to learning-students who have positive learning experiences are more likely to take a deeper approach to their study and obtain higher achievement scores (Trigwell et al., 2012). Negative emotions, however, such as feelings of failure, anger and anxiety can have the opposite effect on motivation and effort and can negatively impact student learning (Falchikov and Boud, 2007; Goralnik et al., 2012; Kahu et al., 2015). Negative emotions are also thought to impact cognitive processing (Falchikov and Boud, 2007; Pekrun et al., 2002) in a similar way that the ‘stress response interferes with memory and attention processes, as well as with information recovery’ (De la Fuente et al., 2014: 721).
However, not all positive emotions are ‘good’ for learning, just as not all negative emotions are ‘bad’. For instance, positive emotions such as ‘relief’ may also lead to decreased motivation, whereas feelings such as ‘anxiety’ from test failure may lead to increased motivation to avoid further failures (Pekrun et al., 2002). Individuals can also have different emotional reactions to the same situation depending on their personal goals, feelings of control and perceived abilities (Schutz and Davis, 2000). While acknowledging that not all assessment is a negative emotional experience and that not all negative experiences are detrimental to learning, negative experiences that result in anxiety and stress, and negatively impact on well-being are a cause for concern. According to Mudhovozi (2011), assessment is a major reason for stress among students. Contributing factors might be the way we assess (Harland et al., 2014) and the tension between the multiple purposes of assessment (Kvale, 2007). For instance, assessment can be used as a form of formative evaluation, with the aim of improving learning (Boud, 2007). However, the marks and grades obtained after assessment are also used by institutions to make decisions about scholarships, whether a student passes or fails, or progresses to the next level of study.
As higher education becomes increasingly competitive, individuals will come under more pressure to succeed in their grades, which is likely to increase their levels of stress. In addition, research has shown that students in higher education already experience a greater degree of stress compared with the general population (Bore et al., 2016). Stress has also been linked to mental health problems (Mills et al., 2008), which are highly prevalent among the student population and have been shown to impact learning and well-being (Bore et al., 2016; Sarita, 2015; Stallman and King, 2016; Wyatt and Oswalt, 2013). While some might argue that assessment and stress are part of the university experience, it is also well known that students perceive higher education study as extremely stressful (Regehr et al., 2013). There are a number of interventions aimed at helping students cope, for example, mindfulness programmes (Shearer et al., 2016), animal-assisted stress reduction programmes (Haggerty and Mueller, 2017) and stress management programmes (Panda et al., 2015). Such programmes are often set up with the assumption that students cannot cope with study and such a culture should be challenged. These interventions also often depend on students self-identifying that they need assistance, which they may or may not be able to do. In addition, the interventions themselves may stress students if they are considered an extra activity on top of an already full timetable (Downs and Eisenberg, 2012).
In order to promote assessment as a tool for learning, great care needs to be given to how courses (semester-long classes) are designed. Using the outcome-based approach that now underpins the way in which we all view course design and the need for this to take into account instructional (or constructive) alignment (Biggs and Tang, 2011), the four principles for planning or designing a course involve the following:
Identifying the learning outcomes for a course;
Deciding on the best way to teach these;
Determining how teachers will know the students have achieved the outcomes;
Aligning the learning outcomes, teaching and learning methods, and assessment in order to enhance the likelihood the outcomes will be achieved.
Research suggests constructively aligned courses contribute to high-quality learning outcomes and student satisfaction (Biggs, 2014). Another similar and popular framework for course design is proposed by Fink (2013). In Fink’s framework, a taxonomy of ‘significant types of learning’ is presented. The suggestion here is that there are other types of learning, besides foundational knowledge, that should be valued. These include dimensions such as caring for the subject, for self and for the discipline and a human dimension such as developing self-efficacy (Fink, 2013). Again, the claim is made that when courses are designed well, taking into consideration assessment that is thoughtful and intentional, there are gains in student engagement and learning (Fink, 2013).
An important consideration with course design is the learning environment, as this will influence students’ learning approaches. When the learning environment is perceived as requiring memorisation of unconnected facts, has a heavy workload, and is perceived as threatening and causing anxiety, students are more inclined to adopt a surface approach to their learning (Rust, 2002). However, a course that requires students to interact with others, involves active learning and requires knowledge to be integrated, will foster a deep approach (Rust, 2002).
Another key feature of good course design is to provide feedback that advances learning. This topic has received significant attention in the literature and a review is beyond the scope of this article. The majority of this work concentrates on the nature of the feedback itself. For instance, feedback needs to be timely (Shields, 2015), specific and manageable (Crisp, 2007). However, feedback is also an emotion-laden exercise. As Shields (2015) found in a study of first-year students, students personalised the feedback they received and related it to themselves as learners. For instance, students who had doubts about their capability to study felt this was confirmed by the feedback they received. Similarly, in their study of further education, Ecclestone (2007) found that less confident students, who regularly received low grades, did not believe that formative feedback could help them improve. By paying attention to the emotional reaction of students to feedback, we may improve learning outcomes for students (Dowden et al., 2013). Boud, for instance, suggests that not only should feedback be informative, but it should also be supportive and foster a positive attitude to learning (Boud and Dochy, 2010).
Even when a course is well-aligned, institutional-level decisions may be contributing to students’ negative emotional responses of assessment. Many institutions have a modular degree structure in order to make credits transferable across universities and to give students some choice of which courses (or units) they wish to study (Jessop et al., 2014). However, modularisation has led to an increase in the assessment load experienced by students (Bloxham and Boyd, 2007; Jessop et al., 2012; Sursock et al., 2010) as subjects traditionally taught over a full year are now packaged into a single 13 week semester. There has also been an increased emphasis on internal assessment, where part of the final grade for a course is based on the results of essays, assignments, or other practical work. Assessment practices have gradually changed from formative to summative as ‘summative assessment had secured its foothold’ (Boud, 2007: 4; Jessop et al., 2012). It is a standard practice in most universities for all grades to count towards the award of a degree and from the students’ perspective, this means all assessment becomes high stakes (Harland et al., 2014; Jessop et al., 2012). For instance, assessment patterns from 14 institutions in the United Kingdom found that students typically experienced eight times as much summative as formative assessment (Jessop and Tomas, 2016). At an institutional level, assessment policies are often looked at in relation to course objectives and graduate attributes (Jessop and Tomas, 2016). However, assessment policies that do not contest fragmented and modularised assessment practices will contribute to students being over-assessed, stressed, and experiencing negative emotions about assessment.
In summary, by understanding students’ emotional responses to assessment, we might be better able to design courses that lead to more students achieving the learning outcomes. It may be that assessment practices (for instance, the way we assess and the number of assessments) might be detrimental to student learning and well-being instead of enhancing student learning. Alternatively, students’ emotional responses might confirm that assessment practices are indeed promoting student learning. Therefore, with well-being and learning in mind, there is a need to explore further assessment practices and the resulting emotional responses from students’ perspectives. Consequently, our research questions are the following:
What are students’ emotional responses to assessment?
How do their perceptions of assessment affect their broader experiences of learning and well-being?
Methods
Participants
The study took place at a large research-intensive university in New Zealand, with a total student population of approximately 20,000. In total, 40 undergraduate students volunteered to open requests to participate in the research project. These students were categorised as being ‘Professional’, ‘Science’ or ‘Humanities’ students. The modular degree nature of the university, however, meant students in any three of the categories might be taking some coursework in a different category. Nonetheless, the 40 participants were generally evenly distributed across Sciences (13), Humanities (12) and Professional subjects (15). Students were in their second or third year of study and so had at least 1 year of being assessed.
Design of study
Interviews were conducted in the first semester of the academic year 2013. Individual interviews were carried out by an experienced research assistant who was trained in qualitative research methodology. The interviews lasted about 1 hour and were recorded and transcribed verbatim. All interviews started with the question ‘What are your experiences of being assessed?’ and then the interview was conducted as an inquiry into the issues students raised. Thus, we were seeking students’ experiences of being assessed and the reasons for any emotional reactions at a very general level – we did not ‘map’ experiences to particular types of assessment or timing. When we use the term ‘assessment’, we are referring to course-level assessment, not programme or institutional-level assessment. In addition, we are primarily referring to work that is assessed and then graded, that is, work that is summative in nature. Formal ethical approval was obtained from the institution’s ethics committee and all data were collected in such a way as to ensure the anonymity of the participants.
Analysis
Data were analysed using Thomas’ (2006) general inductive approach. The transcripts were imported into the qualitative research software HyperResearch, and an inductive process was used to bring out key themes about emotional responses to assessment. Care was taken to include only emotional responses. Physiological responses, such as ‘feeling exhausted’, or cognitive responses, such as a ‘lack of motivation’, were not in the scope. The labelling of emotions is an inherently difficult task, especially as emotions are felt on a continuous scale. Therefore, the participants’ own words were used to describe the emotion they were feeling, for instance, feeling ‘annoyed’ or ‘frustrated’. A segment of coded text included the emotions as expressed by participants with enough contextual information to determine the reasons for the emotion. Text was also coded for students’ perceptions of how assessment affected their broader experiences of learning, and themes and patterns were developed from these data. The first author had responsibility for coding the data, but all authors were involved in the analysis through the writing process.
Results
The results section has been organised into two sub-sections. First, we consider how emotions were present in students’ experiences of assessment and what it was about assessment that caused such an emotional response. Second, we report on how assessment affected students’ broader (i.e. not only emotional) experiences of learning in higher education.
Emotional responses to assessment
Assessment was overwhelmingly described as a negative emotional experience (Table 1). Out of 40 participants, 23 expressed an emotional response to being assessed. Of these, 20 reported negative experiences and 10 reported positive experiences (some individual participants reported both positive and negative experiences). In total, 60 segments of text were coded as containing an emotional response to assessment. In total, 49 of these segments were coded as containing 14 different negative emotions, compared with only 11 pieces of text associated with five positive emotions.
Types of emotion and number of coded emotional responses to assessment from 40 undergraduate students. Percentages are also given against the total number of coded segments (60).
The most frequent negative emotional responses were ‘annoyance’ and ‘frustration’ (Table 1). These two responses are similar, and when combined, accounted for one-third of the negative emotional responses experienced by the students. Annoyance and frustration appeared to result from an inability to change or achieve something. The following response was made in the context of assessment load:
I’d have to come home, do tutoring, come back and it was nine o’clock and I still needed to start studying anatomy but I just didn’t have the time. And I was so tired and felt sleepy and then I would move on to the next day. Then I’d know that tomorrow it would be the same because I wouldn’t have time either and it was really frustrating. It was just tiring. (Student 8)
The next most common negative emotions were disappointment, fear, hate, nervousness and worry:
That first mark [that was received] which was like an average mark, it was still the worst mark I’d gotten at uni even though it’s average for our class. I’d never got a B before so I was sort of like, I was shocked and disappointed, yeah. I was disappointed. (Student 26)
In the following quotation, the student realises the futility of worrying about grades, and that becoming grade-obsessed made her lose sight of the purpose of a higher education:
I found worrying about grades, it kind of creates this toxic mentality where you stop focusing on the paper [course] and you actually lose sight of what you’re doing and why you’re here. (Student 27)
Another recognised the power of assessment that is implemented without careful consideration of grading impacts:
[Grades] get thrown around and without justification, it seems dangerous. Dangerous of losing students, which would be absolutely the worst thing possible. I mean if [the] university can make a student think less of themselves and not want to pursue further education, I couldn’t imagine a worse outcome. (Student 3)
Some did not see final examinations as relevant to the workforce and these generated negative reactions, as illustrated in the following example:
Only some jobs have extreme pressure in this kind of way. I don’t think it’s a normal thing. A lot of jobs don’t have this deadline. Some do, but I mean none that I would be interested in. It sounds like a, a journalist or something or, you know, lots of deadlines or, I don’t know. (Student 14)
Some of the emotions tended to be expressed with respect to a general attitude towards assessment:
I just, I hate them [exams]. I get so stressed because I always think I study so hard for them but then I get to the exam and everyone else is talking about stuff and I’m like, oh God, I don’t know if I studied that and then I just get so stressed with all the questions and, I’m not very good at like memorising things either. I just can’t do it. I just hate them. (Student 11)
Only two students out of 40 spoke about the satisfaction they felt having learned something in which they were interested or having learned something they could see being of relevance for their future employment. Nearly one-third of all the positive emotions reported were from the happiness felt from having completed assignments or having passed rather than from the pleasure of learning. However, three students spoke of taking pride in their work:
Before the Easter break, I had these two essays to do, so that week basically just didn’t exist and I almost discounted. I don’t consider it worthwhile time even. You know, I finish and okay, I’m pretty proud of this piece of writing. It’s cool, but you know, I haven’t really lived this week. (Student 12)
Contributors to emotional reactions
Contributors to negative emotional reactions reported by students are categorised as (1) personal attitudes and reactions towards assessment and (2) the practices by which students were assessed. Overwhelmingly, the practices by which students were assessed were the biggest contributors to the negative emotional reactions they reported (Table 2). The practices identified were things over which educators largely have control when designing assessment and related predominantly to the timing of assessments (coming all at once) and the quantity of material that students had to learn:
You just have exam time and you can do that, but during the year when things fall at the same time and other commitments come up and you have other days and times [that] things are due, to get these big assignments, it just seems impossible. There’s so many times when I feel like being a student is just impossible. (Student 12)
Reasons given for negative emotional experiences and the number of coded segments. Total number of coded text segments = 35.
Assessment practices that educators have control over rather than personal attitudes and reactions to assessment.
How assessment affected students’ broader experiences of learning in higher education
When students discussed their general experiences of being assessed, two broad themes emerged; assessment was perceived as a highly stressful experience and assessment led to sacrifices. These sacrifices could be categorised as academic sacrifices that had an impact on learning and personal sacrifices, which impacted students’ well-being.
Assessment as a stressful experience
When asked about their experiences of being assessed, stress was mentioned 96 times in a negative way by 30 of the 40 respondents. This result was irrespective of subject, and it laid the foundation for a host of negative emotional responses. Without being asked directly about stress, the majority of students openly talked about the stress of being assessed. During times of stress, students reported not being able to talk to other people, having thoughts of killing themselves, and vomiting days before the final examinations. The following quotation is just one of the many negative statements made:
It’s really bad. I already get stressed out and depressed etc. and so it makes it much worse … it’s actually quite, almost, it’s almost dangerous. Like it’s extremely, it’s extremely bad, yeah. (Student 14)
For some, the stress begins early in the semester, not just towards the final examination period:
It’s the second week of uni and I don’t feel like I could spend any time over the weekend right now to do anything social. I just feel so behind in everything and that’s not the way I want to feel, especially this early on. I could understand, you know, before an exam or something but for this early on, to feel this stressed, I don’t feel like it’s healthy and it’s not sustainable. (Student 36)
Students spoke about assessment as being an opportunity to see how they responded under stress and whether they were able to express themselves under the pressure of limited time. One student explored this notion further and questioned what this meant with respect to the purpose of a higher education:
I think what it comes down to is what kind of person are we trying to mould? In this sort of education system, we’re moulding a very particular kind of person. Is it a good person? I don’t know. It’s a person that can remember things really well. It’s a person that can perform well under pressure, perform well under stress. Perhaps learn time management, but at the end of it, if they come out and those are the traits that they’ve gained from this institutionalised education system, I don’t know if we’ve done our jobs right, you know? (Student 12)
Out of the 10 students who did not specifically mention stress, there was still talk about being worried, nervous and disappointed by assessment. Only 1 student out of the 40 said that while stress existed, they personally did not find assessment particularly stressful.
Sacrifices
The second theme for this section was the sacrifices students made because of assessment loads. Sacrifices have been classified as ‘personal’ or ‘academic’, although these two categories are not distinct.
1. Personal sacrifices and impact on well-being
Students claimed that because of assessment, they sacrificed shopping, sleeping and having time for friends. Other personal sacrifices included one student who reported having been top in their sports but giving this up due to assessment demands:
I used to be one of the top mountain bikers in the junior section around Dunedin and I have hardly touched my bike since I started university. (Student 30)
Many recognised the benefits of exercise to manage their stress levels and were frustrated that they did not seem to have time to do this. One student commented on how university was an opportunity for personal development and this was being prevented by an intensive assessment regime:
I think university is this whole holistic experience. It’s about going to the art gallery. It’s about going to societies [clubs] and sports and exploring, and if you have studied all the time all these intensive weeks where nothing else can happen, you’re not growing as an individual. You’re just, I don’t know, you’re losing sleep and taking stimulants and that kind of stuff. (Student 3)
2. Academic sacrifices and impact on learning
Students saw that the mark they obtained reflected their effort not their ability and that this effort was compromised because assessment placed competing demands on their time:
When you’ve got multiple things on, you get to a certain point and you get to a certain mindset where you just think, I just want to get this thing in the box and you stop worrying about quality. You stop sort of focusing on getting it sounding how you’d like it to sound and sort of having that polish. You lose that and you just really want to get it over with and get to the next one. I think having multiple things in terms of quality, in terms of education is quite damaging, particularly when they overlap. (Student 27)
If students know their work is compromised because of time pressure, they look at the feedback differently, as illustrated by the following quotation:
When you do something good, you can be proud of handing it in and when you get comments back, you can be very constructive and like ohh yeah, I can work on that next time, but when you’ve put something half-hearted in and then you get comments like, yeah, I can see it but I didn’t have time to do it. (Student 13)
Students also commented that not only was their work compromised by competing internal assessment, but they also reported that revision for the final examinations was compromised, particularly when internal assessments were due near the end of the semester when the students were in ‘examination mode’:
It’s very daunting and very stressful because I always stress about exams and so when I’m like overloaded with all these assessments, I find like, oh my God, what’s going to happen with exams? I’m not going to be able to study for exams because I’m not going to be able to remember all this stuff that I’m doing for these assessments because once I do the assessment, that’s it. It’s gone because I’ve got to move on to the next one. So I can’t take time to process what I’ve just done and think about it in an exam context. (Student 20)
Students reported that they would like to do additional readings and read around the subjects that they enjoy, but this was a luxury they could not afford because of the assessment load. Similarly, a student talked about wanting to return to course material that they found interesting but not having the time to because of assessment. One student even commented that they felt bad doing the readings because that time could have been spent on assessment:
I think I’d try and do lots of readings because in the lectures they give us references of things that would sort of broaden our knowledge. So yeah, I’d definitely get into the readings, but I just don’t have time. And [I’m] just always worried about something else. So if I did have a day off [working towards an assessment] I’d feel bad for doing the readings because I’d be thinking I should be doing my assessment. (Student 20)
Discussion
Students in this study reported strong negative emotions about assessment, which resulted in stress, and personal and academic sacrifices. However, rather than having a negative emotional response to the nature of the assessment task itself, many students’ emotions were focused on assessment processes over which they felt they had no control but which affected their performance and well-being. For instance, students felt frustrated and annoyed by the timing and amount of assessment, as this influenced the quality of what they could produce and was not a good indicator of their potential.
Courses at this particular institution are structured around a modular design, where students do not enrol in a co-ordinated programme; instead, they study in discrete units or modules. Furthermore, lecturing staff of these modules are charged with determining the course learning outcomes, learning activities, and assessment, often in isolation from teaching staff in other courses. The amount of assessment might seem reasonable within a single module, but the amount of assessment experienced by a student has the potential to become unmanageable and overwhelming when considering students take three or four modules in a 13-week semester. At this institution, course design is centred on Biggs’ (1999) ‘Principle of constructive alignment’. However, knowing about best practices and implementing them are two different things. Feedback, for instance, is a vital component for improving learning outcomes and there has been a great deal of research carried out investigating aspects of feedback to help improve student learning. However, our study suggests that students may not be as attentive to feedback when the work they submit is already compromised due to the number of assessments they have to complete and the timing of those assessments.
Thoughtful course design also encompasses careful planning of assessment activities. Even if individual students are good at managing their personal stress levels, negative experiences can potentially be mitigated through careful planning, as changes in the way we assess can have a dramatic difference on stress levels in students. Suggestions for responding to the emotional nature of assessment and reducing test anxiety include being explicit about the purpose of assessment and, even better, having students actively engage in an assessment exercise where they apply the grading criteria to their work (Rust, 2002). It has also been shown that students with high levels of test anxiety benefit from collaborative testing (Pandey and Kapitanoff, 2011) and having an opportunity to repeat poor summative assessment results (Ecclestone, 2007).
Our findings should be viewed within the context of the limitations. Perception data as used in this study required participants to be aware of and capable of assessing their own emotions accurately. Perception data are also problematic, as perceptions may not be supported by subsequent performance. That is, students may feel that their performance was negatively affected by the timing and number of assessments, but it may not mean that their actual performance was worse as a result. Students’ perceptions of assessment are also likely to change depending on when they were interviewed in relation to their current assessments. For instance, students may feel particularly stressed and anxious before an assessment, but their emotional response may be quite different after the assessment, depending on their performance. In addition, this was a very small sample size and perceptions of assessment may vary according to factors such as gender, level of study, educational background and discipline. This study was carried out only within our own context, that is, from only one university and from only one country (New Zealand). As assessment practices vary from institution to institution and from country to country/culture, future work needs to explore student’s emotional reactions to assessment in other countries/contexts. Research is also needed to track what types of assessments are more likely to evoke emotional responses that are helpful for student learning and respectful of well-being. The study described in this article has explored a number of negative emotions that students claim affect their learning and well-being; however, it is important to also explore more fully the positive emotions and their relationship to assessment.
As educators, we have a responsibility to acknowledge and reflect on students’ emotional experiences of assessment. While we are not suggesting that all negative experiences of assessment be eliminated, we wish to help students achieve their potential in a manner that is not detrimental to their learning or well-being. Decisions made about assessment are not neutral and cannot be taken lightly. Students’ emotions may provide a useful barometer for gauging the appropriateness of assessment. If we can gauge students’ emotional responses to assessment, we might be better able to design courses that lead to more students achieving the learning outcomes while supporting, and perhaps even enhancing, their well-being.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Ako Aotearoa [S12013].