Enhancing Learning through Assessment

Identifying the type of students who do not study at home and the study environments that prompt them to make academic effort is one of the important tasks of educational researchers. From educational and practical perspectives, it is important to know which students face difficulties in making academic effort and what instructions or environments support them to do so. From a sociological perspective, academic effort affects academic and later career achievements; effort functions as a part of mechanism of social stratification. Sociological researchers of education have found that individual socioeconomic background, school hierarchy and tracking shape students’ academic effort. However, there are two issues to be considered: (1) to what extent school instructions and environment affect students’ academic effort when social backgrounds of individuals and schools are controlled, and (2) are there differences between no effort, less effort, and much effort. To address these questions, I investigated the types of students’ or schools’ backgrounds that affect students’ hours of study at home. I analyzed the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) data of first-year high school students in Japan, who are national representatives. The results were as follows: (1) some index of school instructions and environments affected whether one studies at home, even when the social backgrounds of individuals and schools were statistically controlled; and (2) the difference between no effort to less effort and less effort to more effort was not ignorable. These findings indicate that both individuals’ and schools’ social background generate disparities in academic effort. However, educational practices can reduce the disparities to some extent. We should consider what type of effort is required when we investigate those relationships.

This paper presents results of empirical study of college students’ competences in the engineer domains of their self-evaluation on perception and performance in creativity. Universities are strongly expected to provide learning opportunities that foster and nurture creativity for students; hence, creative education in engineering is an ongoing critical mission for both the educational institutes and learners. The research was conducted by a testing questionnaire via theoretical literature review and focus group interviews with experts in the engineer and education fields. The samples are tested by the instrument and there were 307 valid samples for analysis. The statistical method includes means, and the structural equation model.  
The research found the structural relationship among various dimensions and factors based on data of an empirical survey and points out factor values and an influential route of the cultivating model for advancing college students’ competences on creativity for higher education of engineer domains. This study explores the engineering students’ self-evaluation of their competences on creativity achievement which is influenced by the dimensions of personal learning styles, school environment, and curriculum experiences. Foremost, the author establishes a survey questionnaire to examine the performance and opinions of college students and the reliability and validity illustrates that the instrument  are good for testing the empirical circumstance.
The self-evaluation by students demonstrates that school environmental improvement remains a key agenda for university to aware in the changes and developments of building universities and institutes with creative plans and managements for all. The relationship among the dimensions of personal learning styles, school environments, curriculum experiences and learning outcomes on creativity competences exist a significant influence. The conclusion of this model provides a positive stance and relationship for higher education to establish a whole-set structure for educating the youth with the ability of creativity. 

A small scale research was conducted in 5 schools to examine how feedback could be used to enhance student's performance in the Humanities. Leveraging on Hattie's 4 levels of feedback (2009), the purpose of our study is to explore how the AMA (Awareness, Modelling & Application) model may enable students who are failing Humanities to apply feedback more effectively. Using data collected through various methodologies, our research includes tracking and evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed framework in enhancing students' performance in their Combined Humanities grades through the course of a series of formative and summative assessment tools.