Utilising autonomy in assessments to enhance wellbeing, inclusivity and engagement in HE students: Do students perform better if they get to choose their assignments? , 2024
Inclusivity
[2.]

Having a sense of control over your actions (autonomy) is key to enhancing wellbeing. In HE, students who have choice in their learning tend to be more engaged. In 2021, I won an Education Excellence Award for gamifying my 3rd year psychology module ‘The Psychology of Play & Games’ where students had to complete a minimum of 4 out of 10 weekly tasks. They were not penalised for failing to submit tasks but were unable to choose those tasks as options for later marking, thus reducing their overall options (task pool). Each task was based on a different skill: Problem-solving, Creativity, Reasoning and Information Assessment, providing inclusivity for students with different talents, abilities and interests. An analysis of the last 3 years of the module (2020-2023) looked at relationships between the number of tasks submitted, the category of tasks and subsequent performance (grade) on those tasks. We found a strong positive relationship between the number of tasks submitted, task category and performance, as well as between engagement (task enjoyment) and performance, independent of task difficulty. This suggests that providing students with choices which they control can have positive effects on performance, but also increase inclusivity, engagement and wellbeing.

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