University Students’ Sentiments Regarding Levelling the Assessment Terrain: The Zimbabwean Experience.

Abstract

The realisation that examination results are used by numerous stakeholders for making life changing decisions regarding the examinees acted as an impetus for the current study. The central focus of the study was to examine the variables which can be manipulated to level the assessment terrain so that examinees stand a better chance of demonstrating their best intellectual prowess. The study was perceived from a psychological point of view with psychological theories such as Bandura’s social learning theory, the humanistic theories of Maslow and Rogers and the Yerkes-Dodson law acting as the theoretical framework. The phenomenological research design was used and questionnaires with open-ended items were used as data gathering instruments. A gender balanced sample of 60 respondents comprising university students studying different degree programmes was obtained using the stratified random sampling method. The research participants indicated that a number of factors can be manipulated to ensure that they get the chance to demonstrate their accurate intellectual abilities. Among other things, the university students who took part in the study stressed that they need to be equipped with techniques for answering examination questions. The respondents also indicated that a propitious examination environment needs to be introduced and objective scoring is needed for them to get examination results which reflect their academic abilities. It was recommended that stakeholders such as lecturers and examination administrators should endeavour to level the assessment terrain so that students can fairly be assessed