Building student self-reflection and self-confidence by voluntary formative progress testing

In higher education, learning is organized in coherent curricula. However, students perceive their study programme as a set of separate courses, each with their own learning outcomes. As a result, many students do not recognize the learning lines connecting courses that jointly form the curriculum, and are therefore lacking an overview of the discipline. They experience limited transfer of knowledge and skills between courses within the programme. As a consequence, many students lack self-reflection and self-confidence, which are important for their future careers. To resolve this, we introduced formative progress testing at the programme level in our Geography BSc programmes. Progress testing consits of periodical testing of students on their knowledge of all programme elements regardless of their year of training. We have operationalized the concept as voluntary digital progress tests which are offered to students twice a year. Taking the test provides access to an informative dashboard that enables students to monitor their overall progress at the programme level, and to build their self-reflection and self-confidence. In the dashboard, students can filter results based on programme learning outcomes and selected subjects, and compare results with their fellow students. We are currently in the progress of developing a management dashboard, providing insights in progress of specific groups of students. In that way, we can improve the curriculum based on the outcomes. Voluntary formative progress testing therefore increases educational quality by making the overall learning progress more visible to students, and by analysing progress test group-based outcomes.