Dike-Oduah, Kanayochukwu; (2025) Tik-‘X’-ing the Assessment Box: A Qualitative Exploration of Students' Educational Assessment Experiences on TikTok and X (Twitter). Doctoral thesis (Ed.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Young people actively share their experiences of high-stakes educational assessment on popular social media sites, Twitter/X and TikTok. At the time of writing (January 2024), TikTok videos with the hashtag #GCSE were viewed 7.2 billion times and 4.3 billion times for #alevels, indicating that digital representations of high-stakes assessments are reaching a vast audience. Based on two qualitative data sources, this thesis examines students’ complex and diverse responses to high-stakes educational assessments on social media. The first data source, social media data (researcher-sourced and participant-sourced), was analysed to explore how students’ educational assessment experiences were represented in a sample of 53 TikTok videos and 29 Tweets. The second data source consisted of four semi-structured focus group interviews, during which students were shown a sample of social media data. The aim was to explore how students discussed the social media data and constructed meanings. The social media data and their discussions were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Eight themes were identified, showing that students disclosed positive and negative responses to educational assessments. The findings suggested that students had empathy with the online dialogues and connections in the comments section of social media posts. Notably, students used social media to recreate their exam experiences using visual imagery with links to humour and popular culture, aptly discussed as the “unexpected faces of assessment”. Ambivalent views of exam boards were apparent, and participants confirmed that social media was a tool for students to reify and construct their academic goals and critically engage with assessment structures and processes. The findings supported the development of an emerging theoretical approach, the Social Media Assessment Framework (SMAF), which tentatively bridges social, psychological, and assessment theories with digital research frameworks, offering an initial lens for understanding students’ assessment experiences on social media. The implications of these findings for teachers, schools, and exam boards are discussed and foreground the need for further research in this area to understand and respond to the growing influence of social media on students’ experiences of high-stakes assessment.

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