TEM Journal. Volume 8, Issue 1, Pages 298-304, ISSN 2217-8309, DOI: 10.18421/TEM81-41, February 2019. 298 TEM Journal – Volume 8 / Number 1 / 2019. Is Current Formative Assessment Still Relevant in Turning Students into Deep Learners? Noor Liza Adnan 1 , Nur Raihana Mohd Sallem 1 , Rokiah Muda 1 , Wan Karomiah Wan Abdullah 2 1 Faculty of Accountancy, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia 2 Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia Abstract – Universities should design the assessment activities that could induce students to be deep learners instead of surface learners, and at the same time equip them with relevant soft skills. This paper aims to gain insight on students’ perception on the appropriateness of the assessment activities in developing soft skills of a management accounting subject at a public university in Malaysia. 420 usable questionnaires were collected out of 686 distributed to fourth semester students taking the said subject. Descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney U test were conducted to achieve the objective. Results revealed that students did not benefit much from test or quiz implying that such assessment does not turn students into deep learners as expected. On the other hand, group work and presentation do contribute to the development of soft skills. However, findings should not be generalized to other subjects. Keywords – Test and quiz; Formative assessment; Traditional assessment; Group work and presentation; Soft skills. 1. Introduction Researchers agree that assessment, especially formative assessment, is an important tool that academicians may manipulate to change and control students’ approach to learning. How do they want DOI: 10.18421/TEM81-41 https://dx.doi.org/10.18421/TEM81-41 Corresponding author: Noor Liza Adnan, Faculty of Accountancy, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia Email: noorliza@tganu.uitm.edu.my Received: 08 January 2019. Accepted: 11 February 2019. Published: 27 February 2019. © 2019 Noor Liza Adnan et al; published by UIKTEN. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. The article is published with Open Access at www.temjournal.com their students to study? Do they want their students to be surface learners, who merely memorize the material content, then pouring it all on the examination paper, and later on forgetting what they have learned? Or do they want their students to take a deep approach by attempting to make sense of what they learn, developing an understanding, and relating what they learn to the real world? These two approaches to learning would bring about graduates with two distinct qualities. Deep approach will turn students into active learners, who constantly seek to acquire new knowledge and equipped with necessary transferable skills to workplace [1]. On the other hand, surface learners may emerge as ones who most probably show good academic result, but lack of soft skills that makes getting employed become highly unlikely [1]. Researchers (like, [2],[3],[4],[5]) have strong evidence to suggest that it is the assessment activities employed that would influence the students’ choice of approach. Elton and Johnston [4] strongly emphasized that changing the teaching method without changing the way the students are assessed would not change the students’ learning approach. Therefore, a formative assessment that focuses on a constructivist approach with an adaptable process that emphasizes on students [6] should be employed by a university if it really wants to produce balanced graduates. Unfortunately, Rushton [6] discovered that assessment nowadays actually inhibits this objective. To date we are still not clear as to how our students perceive the impact of assessment on their approach to learning. Are the assessment activities implemented still relevant for this new generation? Higher institutions undeniably make it their main agenda to produce balanced graduates who are academically excellent and equipped with certain transferable skills to the workplace. But are we really on the right path to achieve our aim? Kalra [7] had conducted a survey on 472 Malaysian employers which has revealed a disappointing result. 70% of them were disappointed in the quality of the “just average” graduates; 26% characterized the graduates