Nursing Students’ Perceptions and Attitudes towards Continuous Assessment as Means of Academic Evaluation in University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus

Abstract

The study investigated nursing students’ perceptions and attitudes towards continuous assessment as means of academic evaluation in University of Nigeria, Enugu campus. The subjects for this study were all the 454 undergraduate nursing students of the Department of Nursing Sciences University of Nigeria, Enugu campus. Six research objectives and five hypotheses guided the study. Cross- sectional descriptive design was adopted for this study. A face and content validated structured questionnaire in 4 point Likert scale format with a reliability coefficient of 0.83 was used for data collection. Data were analysed descriptively using frequencies, percentages, mean and standard deviation and statistical test of relationship between variables was done using one-way analysis of variance, t-test and Chi-Square. Major findings revealed that all the nursing students (mean=3.19±0.29) have positive views about continuous assessment, majority (mean=3.11 ±0.29) have positive views on the various methods of continuous assessment. All the students (mean=3.21 ±0.34) have positive view of the benefits of continuous assessment, all the students (mean=2.9 ±0.52) encounter challenges in carrying out continuous assessment and all the students (mean=3.03 ±0.59) have positive attitudes towards continuous assessment. The result also revealed that more than one quarter of the students 123(28.3%) preferred objective test items as method of continuous assessment. The study also showed that students’ view of continuous assessment has positive influence (p < 0.05) on their attitudes towards continuous assessment while the students class level have no influence (p > 0.05) on their perception of continuous assessment . There was also no significant difference (p > 0.05) in the view of continuous assessment, between male and female students and no significant relationship (p > 0.05) in the preferred methods of continuous assessment between male and female students. Based on the findings, the researcher recommended among other things that C.A. of students should be extended to all the domains of learning, the library of schools should be well equipped and update on implementation of continuous assessment given to teachers to avoid bias assessment.