2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Self-assessments are used in higher education to spur students to metacognitive learning engagements. In the process of self-assessing, students activate self-regulatory functions that enable students to take ownership of their own learning. Self-assessment activities include students reflecting on, evaluating, and monitoring their own learning performances. Students
who self-assess are better able to identify areas they need to improve upon, and to determine the most appropriate courses of action to achieve academic success. However, little is known about the congruence in students’ perception of self-assessment and instructor's intent in requiring self-assessments. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions of engineering students who participated in self-assessment in an engineering course and how their perspective of the experience compares with the intent of self-assessments by the course instructor. The study further investigates students’ positive and negative experiences while engaging with the self-assessment process.

This investigation is an exploratory study that uses a collective case study design. Participants are 121 undergraduate students who enrolled in an engineering class and the course instructor at a R1 public university in Southeastern USA. Data for the study was collected using a qualitative survey that included questions that required students to reflect on their experience and type their responses to prompts that probe their perception of the purpose, benefits, and difficulties of self-assessment activity they engaged in. In addition, the instructor’s intent of using self-assessment was obtained through a semi-structured interview session.

The data were coded and analyzed using the NVivo data analysis software. A deductive thematic analysis was conducted on participants’ responses using the self-regulation framework proposed by Zimmerman [15] and McMillan and Hearn [8]. The final codebook was based on the guiding framework and multiple iterations of coding and engaging in critical reviews of codes by peer debriefers.

The results showed students’ perceived purpose, benefits, and difficulties of self-assessments.
Further, findings revealed that self-assessment aided students’ understanding,
helped them reflect on their learning and in identifying learning gaps. There was some alignment found between the overall students’ perspectives of the purpose of self-assessment and the intent of self-assessment by the instructor. The knowledge from this study could help instructors on ways to elicit informed feedback about their courses from students. This could in
turn help in the redesign of instructional course materials to maximize students’ learning gain.

Keywords: Self-assessment, Student learning, Engineering education, Self-regulation,
Metacognition, Motivation, Autonomy