paper x

Authors:

Eva Blondeel
Prof. dr. Patricia Everaert
Prof. dr. Evelien Opdecam

Date:

Does Practice Make Perfect?

Does Practice Make Perfect? The Effect of Online Formative Assessments on Students’ Self-Efficacy and Test Anxiety

Blondeel, E., Everaert, P., and Opdecam, E. (2023). Does Practice Make Perfect? The Effect of Online Formative Assessments on Students’ Self-Efficacy and Test Anxiety. The British Accounting Review, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2023.101189.

This study investigates the potential of voluntary online exercises – online formative assessments (OFAs) – to increase students’ self-efficacy and test anxiety. OFAs are defined as voluntary online exercises with automatic grading and immediate feedback. Students can use this supplementary learning tool at any time or place during the semester, without influencing the student course grades. A quasi-experiment was administered in an advanced financial accounting course. All students had access to the voluntary OFAs and self-efficacy and test anxiety was measured for all students with a questionnaire. In addition, qualitative focus group data verified if the quantitative results are in line with students’ OFA perceptions.

Results show that during the semester, students’ self-efficacy decreases and test anxiety increases. Educators should be aware of this unfavourable trend. However, this paper shows that accounting educators can help students overcome these detrimental effects. More specifically, the results show that students using OFA experience an increase in self-efficacy, and those students also tend to experience lower test anxiety. Students confirm these favourable effects based on their experiences with the OFAs. The results demonstrate how OFAs support accounting students to increase their self-efficacy and decrease their test anxiety. Therefore, accounting educators are encouraged to provide students with voluntary additional exercises.

Read more here.