Assessing Students’ Learning in Higher Education. Specificities of the European Master Program in Children’s Rights

Background: The traditional approach to teaching and learning in higher education was to use examinations and essays as primary methods of assessing students. Changes in higher education system have put pressure on faculty to employ different and new assessment methods to evaluate students’ learning outcomes: knowledge and skills. Purpose: This paper has a two-fold objective: (1) analyzing students’ involvement in and perceptions about assessments practices employed in a specific postgraduate program and (2) involve students in thinking about their own learning process and its evaluation.
Methodology: Students enrolled in a postgraduate program filled questionnaires at the end of examination period, after being exposed to different assessment practices, but before they received their final grade at the teaching module. Results: Preliminary results showed that although students have been exposed to the same teaching and assessment practices, there is a great diversity and variability in their rating system. Usage of essays had the highest agreement level of usage (44.4%), followed by oral presentations (27.8%). Contrary, the highest disagreement level was noticed for reflective journals (35.3%), multiple choice tests (27.8%) and book/articles review (23.5%). 22.2% respondents nominated field placement and presentations as most useful practices.
Conclusions: As evaluation is an important component in higher education, we consider this will make a significant contribution to our current thinking and designing effective practices in higher education programs.


Keywords: assessment practices, students, higher education, competencies