How do students grade their learning?

For the past two decades, Purdue University has been using student self-reports to provide information that has proved to be invaluable in educational planning and development. These critical student inputs are used to help place students in beginning courses, to identify high-risk and honors students, to evaluate the quality of courses, services and resources, to initiate and evaluate existing and new programs, and to help students make career decisions. The paper discusses the use of self-reports of beginning students using the Mathematics Science Inventory (MSI). The MSI has 100 mathematics items organized into six mathematics sub-scales and 50 chemistry items organized into five chemistry sub-scales. All of the MSI scales have very high reliability and differential validity. Use of student self-reports in placement and in evaluating achievement and their relationships to high school and college grades and test scores are also examined. The MSI was completed by over 1500 first year Purdue Engineering students at the beginning of their first academic year MSI data was part of the statistical procedures used to place beginning students in mathematics and chemistry courses. A representative sample of 250 students were re-administered the MSI at the end of the first semester Significant achievement gains were observed in all of the MSI scales. The differential validity of the MSI scales were also documented. Students in the remedial courses had post-test scores similar to the pre-test scores of students in the regular courses. Students in the regular courses had post-test scores similar to students in the advanced courses. Students in the advanced courses also showed significant pre/post test mean score gains.