Solving the mystery about the factors conditioning higher education students' assessment: Finland versus Spain
ISSN: 0040-0912
Article publication date: 29 July 2020
Issue publication date: 1 September 2020
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to compare the assessment in two subjects of the Business Administration Degree between Finland and Spain and, second, to test whether there are factors such as gender, age, subject, students’ motivation, or preferences that may have an impact on the assessment.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey was designed for students enrolled in Statistics and Financial Accounting subjects in the two universities, and multivariate statistical analysis were run.
Findings
First, coursework marks are higher than the final examination marks. In both universities and subjects, learning is enhanced by student involvement in coursework activities that are directly related to the learning outcomes. Second, there are differences in assessment by culture, gender, and type of subject. Finnish students are more used to work in teams and apply varied teaching resources than Spanish students.
Research limitations/implications
The sample size and the analyses are from two subjects in two universities. More similar studies are needed to generalize the findings.
Practical implications
There are several implications for Higher Education. First, university policymakers should design training courses on the good implementation of new assessment processes and criteria in order to align learning objectives and assessment criteria. Second, teachers from different countries should openly discuss their manner of assessment and promote creativity and innovation in their methodologies to assess learning outcomes. Third, students should engage with deeper learning and competence development in subjects. This will contribute to their future employability.
Originality/value
Our findings not only question the concept of assessment validity and the compulsory relationship between assessment and learning but also provide suggestions to improve assessment criteria.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the R&D project Inte-R-LICA (The Internationalisation of Higher Education in Bilingual Degrees) for the period 2014–2016 (REF. FFI2013–41235-R). A preliminary version of this paper was published in the official proceedings of the following conference: Camacho-Miñano, M., del Campo, C., Pascual-Ezama, D., Urquia-Grande, E., Rivero, C., Akpinar, M. (2016). Are we assessing correctly our students? Spain versus Finland. In J. Domenech, M. Cinta Vincent Vela, R. Peña-Ortiz, E. de la Poza & D. Blazquez (Eds), Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Higher Education Advances. We also appreciate the valuable disinterested participation of all students in this survey.
Citation
Camacho-Miñano, M.-d., del Campo, C., Urquía-Grande, E., Pascual-Ezama, D., Akpinar, M. and Rivero, C. (2020), "Solving the mystery about the factors conditioning higher education students' assessment: Finland versus Spain", Education + Training, Vol. 62 No. 6, pp. 617-630. https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-08-2019-0168
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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