Assessing Students’ Attainment in Learning Outcomes: A Comparison of Course-End Evaluation and Entry-Exit Surveys

Abstract

The traditional course-end evaluation for the general education courses at The Chinese University of Hong Kong cangauge student's perception of their attainment of the intended learning outcomes at the end of the course but canhardly reflect the changes of their perception from the beginning to the end. In order to trace the change in students'perception regarding the intended learning outcomes of the General Education Foundation course In Dialogue withNature, a new assessment method that contains a pair of surveys with a set of identical questions, namely entrysurvey and exit survey, were developed and conducted at the beginning and at the end of the course correspondingly.While both assessment methods showed that the course was well-received, inconsistencies were identified and thatthe entry-exit surveys reveal additional aspects which could be overlooked with the traditional course-end evaluation.The study may suggest that entry-exit surveys provide a more truthful representation of students' perceivedattainment of the intended learning outcomes and sheds light on the development of course assessment strategies in general.