Supporting active learning and perseverance of Freshmen through the implementation of Assessment for Learning principles in a Psychostatistics course at ULiège

Since 2013, the Feedback First-Year Project (FFYP) aims at supporting learning and success of First-Year students enrolled in the same curricula at the University of Liège (Belgium) through good formative assessment and feedback practice in their classes (Nicol, 2009). As part of this project, the online-oriented pedagogical redesign of a course in Descriptive and inferential psychostatistics was carried out according to key strategies (Thompson & Wiliam, 2008) or essential principles of Assessment for Learning. Introducing elementary statistical procedures to a very large group of freshmen from two Bachelors in Psychology, Education and Speech and Language Therapy, this course unit is notably faced with difficulties from students in applying theoretical knowledge to simple datasets to be able to choose the appropriate statistical tests. In order to implement this learning actively and regularly, the course planning was redesigned using Blackboard (the institutional Learning Management System) to include a sequence of three progressively challenging tests that are declined in many sub-questions helping to structure the resolution by the student, and are awarding minimum benefit on the final mark (a single motivating bonus point in case of success). Thus giving them “opportunities for practices and rehearsal”, these “low-stakes assessment” tests were all preceded by identical but purely formative exercises, also allowing to “balance summative and formative assessment” (Sambell, McDowell & Montgomery, 2013). Also designed as an “authentic” tests and exercises programme (both emphasizing the use of statistical procedures in situations that psychologists might encounter and being aligned with the real exam level), this Assessment for Learning online system also provides students with frequent and automatic formative feedbacks with comments for both correct and incorrect answers, intending to help them “feed forward” (Hounsell et al., 2008) and self-regulate their learning. In order to evaluate the impact and the reception of this redesign by students, objective and subjective data were gathered according to the 3P framework of Verpoorten et al. (2017) regarding three aspects of the students’ learning experience: their Participation, Performance and Perception. The first analyzes indicate a statistically significant link between the average mark of the three tests and the mark in the exam (Performance). It also appears that the Participation in those tests is a very strong predictor of the course success as well. Moreover, a survey of the targeted audience shows favorable Perceptions related to the feedback settings, understanding of the Professor’s expectations, likelihood to persevere or self-regulate.