Fostering Teaching Staff's Engagement in Continuous Assessment

Abstract

Among the factors that affect the convergence towards the European Higher Education Area, university teaching staff's motivation is fundamental, and consequently, it is crucial to empirically know what this motivation depends on. In this context, one of the most relevant changes in the teacher-student relationship is assessment. In fact, the transition from a static assessment -focused on only one temporal point (final exam)- to a dynamic assessment, will require changes in thought and action, both on the part of teachers and students. In this line, the objective of this paper is to analyze the determinants of teaching staff's predisposition to the continuous assessment method. Specifically, we consider the following explanatory dimensions: teaching method used (which measures their degree of involvement with the ongoing adaptation process), type of subject (core, compulsory and optional), and teacher's personal characteristics (professional status and gender). The empirical application carried out at the University of Alicante uses Logit Models with Random Coefficients to capture heterogeneity, and shows that "cooperative learning" is a clear-cut determinant of "continuous assessment" as well as "continuous assessment plus final examination". Also, a conspicuous result, which in turn becomes a thought-provoking finding, is that professional status is highly relevant as a teacher's engagement is closely related to prospects of stability. Consequently, the most relevant implications from the results revolve around the way academic institutions can propose and implement inducement for their teaching staff.