LMS log activity and formative assessment – is the feedback itself enough to increase the motivation?

Abstract

Formative assignments are clearly beneficial for the students as they can have more authority on the learning goals and studying times than on courses with examinations. Furthermore, students will receive feedback and guidance for their formative assessments which can help them to achieve the required learning outcomes. Therefore, formative assessment is a plausible method for the evaluation during flipped classroom courses in which autonomous studying activity is in the center of the learning process.

This study detected the learning behavior differences when exams in an undergraduate flipped classroom bioscience course were replaced with formative evaluation in fall 2019. The course activity and learning outcomes of 352 voluntary students were collected for this study during the academic year 2019–2020. The course activity and learning outcomes were compared with similar information of the same course during the academic year 2016–2017 when formative evaluation was used. The shift from summative to formative assessment increased the proportion of high-grade students significantly in a permanent manner. This was related to students’ increased activity in LMS but not directly to the essay feedback. The LMS activity of all student groups had a fade during the 3-month course and participation in the social elements of the course increased significantly students’ motivation to persevere in their study work and reach their learning goals. In contrast, students with low course activity at the beginning of the course, were at a substantial risk of dropout and in many cases ended their study work before submitting a single formative assessment into which they could get teacher’s feedback and guidance. Therefore, the formative assessment is an effective way to potentiate learners’ self-regulation on the workload and the learning goals, but it requires students’ motivation to study.