Regular Online Assessment, Motivation and Learning

In 2002 regular online assessment was introduced as one of the pillars of an improved course in economics for business students. These online tests were introduced in the context of the problem-based teaching format used at Universiteit Maastricht, where students work in small groups guided by tasks. In this student-centred approach it is important that students come well-prepared to their group meetings. For students this is a type of Prisoner’s Dilemma, because students can free-ride on the preparation of other students. It has also characteristics of an Assurance Game, because if a large part of the group is not well-prepared, the students that did prepare well will also get not much out of the group discussion and therefore will be less motivated to prepare for themselves, too. The risk that such an Assurance Game arises is higher when the majority of students is not intrinsically motivated at the start of the course. The interest in the subject matter of the course will certainly not increase when students do not study enough. Regular online assessment may help to solve these dilemmas by forcing students to prepare at least the textbook they have to read before the group meetings.In this paper we discuss the role of online testing in the context of problem-based learning and show that after the introduction of online learning and other innovations students worked harder, had the feeling that they learned more and reported to be more interested in the subject-matter of the course (i.e. economics). It is obvious that the increase in work effort and motivation as the consequence of online testing is not limited to the context of a problem-based learning environment.