Abstract:

Assessment is an essential and necessary method in the University teaching-learning process. Exams are specifically one of the most popular tool professors use in assessment process. For this reason, the number of exams undergraduates must face during the development of a subject is a worrying issue that concerns academics and professors. Thus, the aim of the present research is to study the possible relation between the number of exams undergraduates complete and their marks. Therefore, we have analysed the marks of 226 Spanish undergraduates who attended the subject of ‘Publicity and Public Relations’ at the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM). This subject is teaching in three different Bachelor’s degrees: Journalism, Audio-visual Communication and Publicity and Public Relations.

We have considered to examine the 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 academic years, since we applied different assessment methodologies in each period. During the 2015/2016 academic year, there were two mid-term exams and one yearly exam. In this case, undergraduates must pass the two mid-term exams if they wanted to pass the subject and, just in case they took an incomplete in one or both mid-term exams, they had the opportunity to retake the class in the one yearly exam. This means that yearly exam is an optional test that gave students the chance to repeat the theoretical block they failed.

On the other hand, during the 2016/2017 academic year, there was a mid-term exam and a yearly exam. Both of them were obligatory. The mid-term exam just included one theoretical part of the lessons, so undergraduate must do the one yearly exam, although they passed the previous mid-term exam.

The main results show there are statistically significant differences between the marks of students of the 2015/2016 academic year and the 2016/2017 academic year. When undergraduates had to do the two mid-term exams -that included the whole theory of the subject-, the percentage of students who got a ‘passing grade’ increased, but there were more students who decided to give up the subject. In sum, it is concluded that the number of exams affects the final score of undergraduates in some situations.

Keywords:

Assessment, mid-term exams, yearly exams, marks, undergraduates, teaching-learning process, final score.