Do continuous assessment results affect final exam outcomes? Evidence from a microeconomics course

• Main Author: Juan Carlos Reboredo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad Politécnica de Valencia 2017-04-01
• Series: Multidisciplinary Journal for Education, Social and Technological Sciences
• Subjects: Continuous assessment; final exam performance; conditional dependence
• Online Access: http://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/MUSE/article/view/6548

Continuous assessment aims to enhance student learning and understanding of a subject and so achieve better educational outcomes. We investigated how continuous assessment grades affected final exam grades. Using a dataset for six academic post-Bologna Process years (2009-2015) for a first-year undergraduate microeconomics course offered at a Spanish public university, we examined conditional dependence between continuous assessment and final exam grades. Our results would indicate a limited contribution of continuous assessment results to final exam results: the probability of the final exam performance improving on the continuous assessment grade was lower than the probability of the opposite occurring. A consistent exception, however, was students who obtained an A grade for continuous assessment. Our results would cast some doubt on the beneficial effects of continuous assessment advocated by the Bologna Process.