The Use of Quality Formative Assessment and Students’ Learning Achievement Gain in west Ethiopia University Classrooms

Abstract

This study describes how the use of quality formative assessment in a university course contributes to learning improvement. There is an increased interest among educational researchers to determine improvement of student learning that result from assessment practices. Quality formative assessment includes formative feedback, self-assessment and peer assessment. The study followed a partially mixed sequential research design and applied a quasi-experimental intervention that lasted for six weeks where six educators applied quality formative assessment on lessons of a general psychology course for intervention group students (N= 191) in which the quantitative data were collected by formative assessment questionnaire and achievement test before and after the use of quality formative assessment. The qualitative data were collected by focus group discussions with the students. The students’ pretest and posttest achievement scores were compared between the intervention (N =191) and the comparison (N = 187) groups. The quantitative analysis used ttest and biserial correlation and attested the presence of statistically significant difference between the two groups in the posttest score. Moreover, effect size estimate (Cohen’s d) was used to provide a validation on the variation between the two groups on the posttest achievement score. Recommendations were made to promoting the use of quality formative assessment aiming at the improvement of student learning achievement in university classes.