A Comparison of Assessment Practices and Their Effects on Learning and Motivation in a Student-Centered Learning Environment

摘要

With recent interest in moving from teacher-directed instruction to approaches that incorporate greater opportunities for student-centered learning come concerns that traditional classroom practices associated with assessment and grading may be inappropriate for learning environments grounded in a constructivist perspective. The study reported here compared three different assessment methods used during a student-centered program. Participants were seventh graders who used Alien Rescue, a hypermedia problem-based learning program, over the course of three weeks in their science classes. The effects of the different assessment methods on students' solutions to the problem posed in the software, their performance on a factual knowledge test, and their motivational orientation were examined.