Enhancing students’ engagement in learning through a formative e-assessment tool that motivates students to take action on feedback

The number of computer assisted assessment (e-assessment) applications in higher education is increasing rapidly. While e-assessment tasks have provided a distinctive learning environment to students and, at the same time, helped university academics to cope with the increased number of students with fixed resources, little has been reported in the literature on the impact of e-assessment programs on students’ learning behaviour. This paper reports on a study that incorporated a formative e-assessment tool to give students multiple submission opportunities and to answer students’ questions. By encouraging students to correct errors and to receive award marks, it enhanced students’ engagement in learning. Results showed that the approach was effective in encouraging students to take action on the feedback provided by the e-assessment program. By correcting the errors they made, students’ performances were improved.