Are they taking action? Accounting undergraduates’ engagement with assessment criteria and self-regulation development

ABSTRACT Our study aims to investigate whether engaging students with formative assessment and feedback activities could support students’ self-regulation, improve performance and improve satisfaction with assessment. The intervention designs are implemented using a novel framework, developed for staff reflection, derived from a self-regulation learning model and formative assessment and feedback principles. Zimmerman’s self-regulation model is chosen for a holistic approach, covering all Phases, to investigate the interventions within 3 honours level modules covering 483 students and 9 academic staff. Student views are obtained immediately following interventions from a short questionnaire and statistically analysed; semi-structured staff interviews are analysed thematically from NVivo. Significant improvement in students’ confidence and satisfaction with assessments occurs; evidence for improvement in performance and self-regulation is limited. Staff reflection areas are identified with suggestions for more effective feedforward strategies in support of self-regulation.