Effect of a summer school on formative and summative assessment in accounting education

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of a voluntary accounting summer school on formative and summative assessments in accounting education. A quasi-experiment with a questionnaire design was conducted in a first-year undergraduate accounting course. The sample consisted of 497 first-time higher education students. The effectiveness of voluntary summer school for performance was examined by comparing the attendees’ and non-attendees’ scores on two formative assessments and one summative assessment to determine whether attendees scored higher. The results of multiple one-way analyses of covariance, controlling for different variables, reveal that attendance at summer school has a significantly positive effect on short-term performance (first formative assessment), but it disappears over time. No significant differences are found for the second formative assessment or the summative assessment. Stepwise linear regression analyses show that the scores of the test the students completed at the end of summer school are significantly positively related to the summative assessment score (final exam at the end of the semester). Implications and recommendations for further research and the organization of summer schools are covered.