What Features of Assessments Do Higher Education Students Find Most Engaging?

Assessment design offers a critical lever for enhancing higher education students’ engagement. To understand what students find most interesting/engaging, we surveyed students (N=668) across arts/humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Students described their most engaging/interesting assessment and then rated three assessment design features, nine emotions, and two perceived learning outcomes associated with it. Students described various assessment types. Few systematic relationships existed between types and features, suggesting that a range of typical assignments can be adapted to include effective features. On regression analysis, the features of authentic assessment and support predicted positive emotions while lack of support predicted negative emotions. Authentic assessment and support also predicted students’ perceived achievement on the assessment and boost to self-confidence. Implications for practice are discussed.