Student Achievement Goals with Alternative and Traditional Exam Formats

In an engineering course, students' motivation during an exam can be understood through the framework of their "achievement goals," which can be divided into performance and mastery goal orientations. Performance goals are associated with seeking high performance and avoiding low performance. Mastery goals are associated with developing skills and increasing understanding. We hypothesize that in large courses, the structure of exams—as high-value assessments—has a large influence on students' goal orientation. This study investigates the use of an alternative exam structure in a sophomore-level aerospace engineering course at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The instructors gave students six quizzes and an optional final exam, rather than the traditional three midterm and comprehensive final exam format historically used in the course and similar courses in the curriculum. The optional final exam allowed students to correct mistakes and misconceptions from up to three of the midterm quizzes. The researchers queried students with a survey regarding both assessment formats to determine differences in perceived goal structures surrounding them. From 112 responses, survey results indicate a noticeable difference in student attitude towards the traditional and alternative assessment formats. Students generally perceived the alternative format to be more mastery-oriented than the traditional format and perceive the traditional format as being more performance-oriented than the alternative format. In our discussion, we point out how these findings could help instructors design more focused assessments that target different achievement goal structures, without sacrificing the efficiency and rigor of administering traditional exams to large engineering classes.