Student perceptions of pre-assessments: “It’s basically just guessing anyways.”

Pre-assessments are a popular tool among researchers and instructors in higher education, but they may pose risks to students, instructors, and researchers that are largely unexplored. To investigate potential risks, we conducted ten semi-structured interviews with college students about their experiences taking pre-assessments. Students unanimously found pre-assessments to be non-threatening and their performance on them to be inconsequential, because they did not interpret them as a predictor of success or indicator of their inherent ability. Instead, students attributed their pre-assessment performance to having previously taken a relevant course with similar assessment items. As a result, half of the students were not motivated at all to put effort into taking the pre-assessment, especially for difficult items. Students believed that pre-assessments are intended to inform the instructor in making tailored course revisions to meet student needs. They valued pre-assessments more if they believed that the instructor uses the pre-assessment results to make course revisions, but half of the students doubted that their instructor would do so. Taken together, our findings suggest that pre-assessments do not pose a direct risk to students, but they may indirectly affect students’ learning experience or relationship with the instructor if the use of pre-assessments undermines the instructor’s credibility. Moreover, students’ lack of motivation to complete pre-assessments can render them an inaccurate measure for instructors and researchers. We therefore encourage instructors and researchers to clearly communicate the specific uses of pre-assessments to students before assigning them.