Data analysis of traditional summative assessment and continuous assessment-Engineering Science Departments case study

Comparing with the traditional summative assessment, the continuous assessment is a minor assessment method in universities around the world. In the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, the Department of Electrical Engineering Science applied the continuous assessment in the past five years in order to achieve better study performance while the Departments of Mechanical Engineering Science and Civil Engineering Science are still using the traditional summative assessment. It is necessary to analyse the performance of these two different assessment methods to find which method is better or more stable. In this paper, the traditional summative assessment and the continuous assessment are investigated and compared based on the pass rate of the modules/subjects of these three departments. The histograms and Wilcoxon signed-rank test are used to analyse the differences of these two assessment methods. From the statistical results of this case study, the pass rate of the traditional summative assessment is more stable than the continuous assessment. Finally the unexpected performance of the continuous assessment is investigated.