Student empowerment as a sustainable academic approach to knowledge evaluation

Abstract EN

The present research investigates the impact of learner empowerment on students’ test-modality (or test-mode) preference and academic success.

The research seeks to understand whether providing choice of test modality (paper on online) increases academic success of students with diverse learning styles.

The article also examines criteria applied by students while making a decision on their preference of test modality.

Another issue explored is whether there is any dependence of students’ choice of test modality on their dominant learning style (LS).

According to our research most of the students prefer paper version of the test regardless of their learning style.

On the other hand, two dimensions of the Index of Learning Style (ILS) impact students’ decisions on test modality preferences, meaning that having high score in sensing or sequential scales results in higher probability of selecting online version of the test.

Our data also confirms that students apply different criteria for their decision on test modality preference, partly these depend on student’ information understanding (sequential-global) and information perception (sensing-intuitive) learning style components.

Finally, our data shows that ILS score impacts multiple choice (MC) test results in both paper and online version of the test.

High visual score in ILS is associated with higher MC test results in both paper and online modalities.

On the other hand, learners with higher sensing score are more successful in paper testing and disadvantaged in online testing.

This means that test modality moderates the impact of information perception component of ILS towards test performance.

The results are discussed from the perspective of student empowerment leading to higher academic achievements and reducing academic stress.