Continuous Assessment Method Versus Final Assessment Method: A Review of Students Academic Performance

Abstract

Education is among life's most important things. It enables us to find the significance behind it all and massively
helps to improve lives. There are thousands of high education universities rapidly grow that provide various
courses for students to choose. One of popular high education school is Kolej Komuniti that widely build in
Malaysia. Students will go through traditional learning and e-learning and been tested with continuous assessment
from lecturers and final assessment prepared by universities. Assessment is a key part of any learning and teaching
cycle. In determining what and how students learn, it is the most important factor to consider (Pintrich, Marx, &
Boyle, 1993; Walvoord, 2004). Through assessments, students will be measured every semester whether they have
good performance or bad performance throughout the years. Assessment, according to Nem Singh and Padilla
(2009), is the aggregation of all forms of information on student performance from different sources. Indeed, when
these students are evaluated using both approaches, researchers analyzed the percentage of students who received
high marks using a continuous assessment process, but suffered in a final assessment.
This study aims to investigate how continuous assessment method versus final assessment methods give impacts
to students’ academic performance during their studies. Researcher tends to investigate which method is suitable
for students whether practicing continuous assessment only or final assessment only in Kolej Komuniti especially
or combination of both methods to evaluate students’ academic performance. The methods of the research
conducted are by survey questionnaires using convenience sampling and also interview session with both parties
which are students of colleges and lecturers that working there. The limitation of the study is it is only conducted
in Kolej Komuniti area where students and lecturers are very limited and difficult to reachable.