Assessment in Higher Education: Perceptions among Stakeholders from Ghana

Abstract

Formal education is considered an important means of acquiring knowledge and skills (both attitudinal and technical) for developing human capital stocks; and it increases one’s ability to understand and critique new ideas necessary for facilitating the adoption and/or modification of technology as fundamental to development, growth and poverty reduction in nations across the globe. As nations and the world at large relentlessly channel huge resources into educating their citizenry, assessment is identified as the main means of obtaining authentic feedback to improve students’ learning, teaching and educational programs at all levels. Despite the good attributes and over reliance on assessment, opinions suggest that the ability to identify good assessment techniques is not intuitive supporting the fact that there is no one best approach to assessment. Reported cases of cheating and all kinds of manipulations surrounding conduct of assessments and/or examinations in higher education (HE), together with the advent of mass enrollments at almost all levels of education, the apparent lack of equal expansion in the facilities, non-provision of adequate logistics, and the inability of authorities to properly co-ordinate and/or manage assessment processes as expected have largely accounted for the vociferous calls for review or search for alternative(s) to assessment in education worldwide, more importantly in Ghana. This study therefore sought to ascertain and analyse the perceptions of stakeholders on the assessment process in HE to determine the repercussions of such perceptions. The study involved a cross-sectional survey of students and other stakeholders in HE from the Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana. The results show that the stakeholders’ perceptions on assessment in HE largely coincided with prior studies on assessments that have served as the basis for most pedagogical instructions and educational programs.