This study investigates students' perceptions of rehearsal (test preparation) and testing after the pandemic forced increased online teaching use and experimentation. Data was gathered from information and decision sciences (IDS) students in an underrepresented minority (URM) serving university. Responses from 136 participants were analyzed and…

Evidence abounds that passive strategies such as rereading or highlighting are less effective than active strategies such as drawing models or explaining concepts to others. However, many studies have also reported that students tend to use learning strategies that they perceive as comfortable and easy, even when other strategies may be more…

Feedback is a key factor in helping individuals to self-regulate their learning behavior. Informative feedback, as a very basic form of feedback informing learners about the correctness of their answers, can be framed in different ways emphasizing either what was correct or what must be improved. The regulatory focus theory describes different…

Digital learning environments provide opportunities to support learning in higher education. However, it is yet unclear why and how learners use these opportunities. We propose that learners' achievement goals and their beliefs regarding the instrumentality of e-learning tools to achieve those goals are predictive for learning behavior within…

Background: Mastery and performance goals are typically measured as trait-like abstract goals. However, in their daily academic pursuits, students pursue more concrete goals. The pursuit of these goals is replete with obstacles that can lead to an action crisis. Aims: We examined how mastery and performance goals affect progress, effort and…

Preparing for exams in introductory biology classrooms is a complex metacognitive task. Focusing on lower achieving students (those with entering ACT scores below the median at our institution), we compared the effect of two different assignments distributed ahead of exams by dividing classes in half to receive either terms to define or open-ended…

Background: While previous research has emphasized the importance of personal beliefs (expectancy-value theories) for achievement-motivated behaviour, it lacks the integration of temporal factors that are also discussed as important drivers of achievement-motivated behaviour. Temporal Motivation Theory (TMT) combines both approaches in a…

What 'sources' of knowledge do higher education students draw on, to prepare for exams? And has the pandemic made any difference? The study presented in this paper addresses these questions, in the belief that gaining awareness of the sources through which students learn is important for the instructional design of the courses and the evaluation…

To sit for the CPA Exam in Texas, all candidates must complete an ethics course that has been approved by the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy (TSBPA). These approved courses are offered at educational institutions, using a required Ethics Matrix to create the course to receive approval. The problem addressed by this study is that the…

During the COVID pandemic, universities around the globe had to move not only their content delivery online, but also their assessments. Due to COVID causing significant upheaval in Higher Education (HE), this enforced experiment also afforded an opportunity to reflect on traditional, invigilated, closed book exams (ICBE) resulting in research and…

In postsecondary education institutions, where innovative technologies continually reshape research and pedagogical approaches, the integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools presents promising avenues for enhancing student learning experiences. This study assesses the efficacy of integrating GenAI tools, specifically…

Much of the learning that college students engage in today occurs in unsupervised settings, making effective self-regulated learning techniques of particular importance. We examined the impact of task difficulty and supervision on whether participants would follow written instructions to use repeated testing over restudying. In Study 1, we found…

This paper reports findings from a research study at The Open University, UK into the quality of distance learners' online exam experience and the differences in experience between online (pandemic) and in-person (pre-pandemic) modes of examination. Our research responds to the ongoing need for greater insight into the exam experience and…

Exams are a form of assessment that is ubiquitous in college STEM classrooms yet is infrequently studied from the experiential perspectives of instructors or students. To better understand the forms, methods, and experiences of college STEM exams, we conducted survey-based research with instructors in anatomy and physiology courses, a well-defined…

Assessment of learning within the online classroom is a growing point of discussion, particularly with regard to student exam performance. In 2017, an online Organizational Behavior course offered by a large, Christian university was revised to include a change in the quizzes offered to students to prepare for each of four exams. This study…