Syftet med denna studie är att förstå om Utbildningsdepartementets förslag om en ny betygsskala kan fungera i ljuset av elevernas föreställningar om betyg. Enligt förslaget ska fler betygssteg ge mer rättvisa, större tydlighet samt motivera eleverna att lära sig mera. Tanken med den föreliggande enkätundersökningen är att den ska kunna ge djupare insikter i elevernas förståelse och uppfattning av betyg och bedömning. Dessutom undersöker arbetet i vilken mån betyg kan skapa motivation och påverkar studieresultat hos eleverna. Deltagarna i denna enkätundersökning och våra pilotintervjuer är gymnasieelever från årskurs 2 som läser olika nationella program. Resultaten av vår studie visar att eleverna i stort sett ser positivt på betyg. Eleverna upplever betyg som både en motivationskälla och ett mål i sig. Tydliga skillnader mellan elevernas attityder mellan de olika programmen framkommer när det gäller antalet betygssteg – majoriteten av eleverna på det studieförberedande programmet ser positivt på en utökad betygskala. Dock visar den föreliggande enkätundersökningen att eleverna redan idag tenderar att ha en instrumentell syn på lärandet genom att de fokuserar på betyg snarare än på kunskap. Den risk som vi sålunda ser med fler betygsteg är att fokus ännu mer riktas mot att mäta kunskap och inte mot att främja lärandet. Ytterligare en slutsats som vi kommit fram till är att bedömning bör vara ett pedagogiskt instrument för lärandet. / The aim of this study is to understand whether or not the proposal of the Ministry of Education and Research for a new grading system has a chance to be accepted by students based on their experiences with grades and their current views on grades. According to this proposal, more levels in the grading scale will result in more fairness, greater clarity and motivate students to study harder. The rationale for the current study is to provide deeper insight into the students’ understanding and judgement of grades and the assessment process. Moreover, the study addresses the question if grades in fact create motivation and affect the students’ learning results. Participants in this survey and the pilot interviews were second year upper secondary school students registered in different national programs. The results of our study demonstrate that students in general have a positive attitude towards grades. They experience grades both as source for motivation and goal by itself. Clear differences, however, were observed between the different programs with regard to number of grading scale levels with the majority of students in programs preparing for university studies being positive to more grading scales. Nevertheless, the survey also showed that students already now focus on grade-oriented learning rather than knowledge-oriented learning. Thus, we see a risk that increasing grading scale levels will lead to a further increase in grade-oriented learning, and therefore propose that grading should be used only as one instrument in the learning process directed towards knowledge-orientated learning.

The goal of this essay was to study if the way gaming review sites presented their review evaluation has any influences the level of product involvement in the users it attracts. The assumption we did during the essay was that there was a connection between user’s level of product involvement and the quality of the community. To test this assumption we started out by performing observations on the comment sections in three gaming news sites which varied in their method for evaluating games. The result of these observations showed a significantly higher community quality in one of the websites. To see if this had any connection to the level of product involvement in the users and their preferences regarding evaluation method in reviews we distributed a questionnaire in gaming forums. The overall result of this essay showed that the review site which didn’t show a number in its scoring had the higher community quality but no connections could be found between this and level of involvement users had regarding gaming.