Supervisors: Alieke van dijk
in cooperation with Noortje Janssen @RadbouD University
To prepare higher education students for lifelong learning, it is important to stimulate their self-directed learning. To achieve this, students must have the opportunity to practice self-directed learning, which is commonly fostered by offering them agency—that is, a sense of control over their own learning. However, this should not only apply to students’ learning activities but also to how their knowledge is assessed.
In most traditional summative assessments in higher education, such as multiple-choice exams, student agency is generally lacking. Consequently, several research studies have aimed to increase students’ agency in assessment by modifying test formats.
Initial findings from these studies suggest that agency can be promoted through various interventions that allow students to make decisions about their assessment, such as co-design (Smith et al., 2024) and self-assessment (Nieminen, 2020). However, a comprehensive overview of the interventions designed to promote student agency is still missing. Additionally, it remains unclear which elements of these interventions influence student agency, how they do so, and under what circumstances agency is affected.
Therefore, it is interesting to investigate what interventions have been implemented to enhance students’ agency and to what extent these interventions effectively do so.
METHOD
Recently, we have taken the first steps in setting up a systematic review study to investigate interventions that aim to improve students’ agency. As part of this internship, you will continue with the next steps of this systematic review. Concretely, you will participate in the following activities – leading to an advice report on your findings and proposed next steps:
- Evaluate the search terms that have been identified in earlier internship projects.
- Search for additional studies on agency in assessment based on the search terms mentioned above.
- Summarize the outcomes of the additional articles that you found.
- Determine the critical question and relevance of the systematic review based on the articles found and additional research on the topic.
References
Alexander, P.A. (2020). Methodological guidance paper: The art and science of quality systematic reviews. Review of Educational Research, 90, 6-23. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654319854352
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227-268.
Reeve, J. (2009). Why teachers adopt a controlling motivating style toward students and how they become more autonomy supportive. Educational Psychologist, 44, 159-178.
Smith, A., McConnell, L., Iyer, P., Allman-Farinelli, M., & Chen, J. (2024). Co-designing assessment tasks with students in tertiary education: A scoping review of the literature. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2024.2376648
Wang, C. K. J., Liu, W. C., Kee, Y. H., & Chian, L. K. (2019). Competence, autonomy, and relatedness in the classroom: Understanding students’ motivational processes using the self-determination theory. Heliyon, 5, e01983.