Of mice and pens: A discrete choice experiment on student preferences for assignment systems in economics

With the development of online open courses, tailoring assignment systems to help students achieve their individual learning objectives will be possible. It is important therefore, from both an educational and business perspective, to understand more about how students value the different characteristics of assignment systems. The main contribution of this paper is the use of a discrete choice experiment to elicit students’ preferences for various possible attributes of alternative assignment systems. Our results indicate that students have the strongest preference for assignment systems containing questions that have a high relevance for exam preparation. Our results also indicate that there is a high degree of heterogeneity within the student cohort in their preferences towards various attributes of assignment systems.