Dealing with student assessment anxiety in the first year at university

Ako Aotearoa has some excellent materials and research projects that help tertiary teachers to improve their practice. For instance, consider this research project that finished towards the end of last year, by Valerie Sotardi and Erik Brogt (University of Canterbury), entitled "Understanding Assessment Anxiety during the Student Transition to University". I just read the final report from the project. Unsurprisingly it caught my interest because I predominantly teach first-year students (and PhD students, and nothing in-between any more).

In some ways, this project didn't highlight anything terribly new. Students face anxiety around assessments, and the transition from high school modes of teaching and assessment and their expectations to university modes of teaching and assessment and their expectations is a big contributor to this anxiety. The change of learning environment from high school to university is an unforgiving transition. Assessment at university tends to be higher stakes (or appears so to students), and the large class sizes in first-year lectures tend to prevent students from receiving individualised feedback on their progress. Another big contributor to assessment anxiety appears to be student uncertainty - in particular about how to interpret and execute assessment tasks, and about the criteria and expectations against which assessments will be graded.

I have to say that I was unsurprised at the extent of anxiety that was reported:

More than 3 out of 4 participants in this sample had expressed that tests (82%), writing tasks (82%), and oral presentations (78.2%) elicited mild-to-extreme levels of anxiety. To a lesser degree, approximately 1 in 2 students (52%) had reported group work as associated with mild-to-extreme levels of anxiety. Also noteworthy were descriptive reports of anxiety on extreme anchors of the instrument (i.e., students reporting a 6 or 7 on the 7-point scale). Participants found oral presentations the most intensely distressing (33.5%), followed by tests (31.4%), writing tasks (28.5%), and group work (6.7%).

The lower anxiety around group work was a bit of a surprise. I wonder whether students at the top of the grade distribution and those at the bottom have different experiences of anxiety relating to group work?

The report tried to dig into some of the factors that contributed to assessment anxiety. This bit will also not come as a surprise to any university lecturer:

Time management was another key issue contributing to assessment anxiety. Leaving things to the last minute and realizing too late that there was more to do than anticipated led to an increase in stress and anxiety levels. In contrast, students who planned their work ahead of time and had the opportunity to edit and redo parts of their assessments reported less stress than those with poor time management skills.

The only disappointing part of the report was the lack of really concrete recommendations for improving practice among lecturers of first-year university classes. Sotardi and Brogt surveyed students and staff, and I found the summarised student responses to be a bit more helpful than those from the staff:

Of the course-related factors that reduced anxiety, the most common was confidence in the task. A few students identified various ways of managing their stress, whether that be self-soothing strategies, seeking reassurance from someone else, time management, and group study with classmates. Having prior experience in the assessment type or university experience seemed to greatly relieve stress for students. Other factors included effective teaching, providing useful resources, low weightings of early assessments, and knowing that stress was common among classmates.

It is hard to establish what to do when the recommendation is "effective teaching", since I don't believe there is one-size-fits-all model for that. This bit (again, from students) is also important:

Student participants made the following observations and recommendations about their first year that they thought lecturers should be aware of (in order of frequency):

1. Lecturers need to be realistic and clear about student expectations.
2. Students need time in advance to learn, comprehend, and complete assessments.
3. Time to relax is important.
4. Students don’t always feel comfortable asking questions.
5. Students enjoy self-directed and active learning tasks.
6. Students [may] have mental health issues.
7. Courses with competitive entry are stressful.
8. Lecturer enthusiasm with students makes it easier to learn.
9. Students face a lot of pressure to do well.
10. Too much information can be overwhelming for students.

There is a lot of value in the report, but I get the feeling that this is only just the beginning for understanding the anxiety that students face in the transition to university-level study. More focus on how students perceive this transition, and what works well and what doesn't work so well, will be important. Sotardi and Brogt conclude that:

...staff can assist university students by reiterating that the transition from high school is challenging, and that stress and a lack of confidence are common. Students should know that they are not alone in the challenges they face, and that they can learn to adapt and cope by developing effective strategies in terms of learning, such as study practices and help-seeking behaviours. Lecturers can also assist by taking the time to review their course assessment structure in a way that builds students’ confidence, makes the expectations and priorities for students clear, guides them into thinking about how to approach the assignment, and informs students about the university support structures available to them.

Those might be the most important takeaway messages from this important research.