# A Framework for Mobile-Assisted Formative Assessment to Promote Students' Self-Determination
## 4 Discussions  
The current study proposes a framework that is based on the Self-Determination Theory of motivation and is aimed at guiding the design of mobile-based formative assessment activities enhancing student motivation. An empirical study was conducted to make a preliminary evaluation of the framework. Study findings highlight the capacity of the proposed framework to guide the design of mobile-based formative assessment activities that support student motivation by enhancing their autonomy, competence, and relatedness.  
The results are in line with previous studies about computerized assessments where students were more favorable towards computer-based instruction compared to those who used paper-based assessments [69]. In addition, the study is in line with findings from review studies about the motivational impact of mobile technologies on student learning motivation [70; 71; 72]. Moreover, the study complements and extends previous mobile learning research by better aligning affordances of mobile technology with SDT. Students that participated in the mobile-assisted assessment for learning activities self-reported  
Figure 8: Perceived pre- and post-levels of autonomy, competence, and relatedness.  
higher levels of perceived autonomy support. Online learning environments have the potential to provide students with optimal autonomy-supportive learning experiences [30; 55]. The proposed framework, by taking advantage of the context-aware features of mobile-devices, facilitated student orientation and navigation through the authentic learning environment and offered an autonomy supportive instructional approach. Students in the mobile-assisted assessment for learning activities self-reported higher levels of perceived competence support. Competence support provided by the paper worksheets and tutor feedback may be not always effective due to time, curriculum, and other constraints [73]. Students in the mobile-assisted assessment for learning activities self-reported also higher levels of perceived relatedness. Face-to-face interactions in the experimental group were blended and enhanced with online interactions resulting in more groups and classroom dialogues, and communication and collaboration through shared media spaces. Social networking integrated in online learning platforms for sharing information facilitates the interaction and collaboration among members of the learning community [74]. Research has shown that collaborative learning enhances the feelings of relatedness among students [27]. Higher level of relatedness is not attributed to the postulate that online communication is of better quality than face-to-face communication but due to the fact that it may have a complementary or additive effect. Moreover, all three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness link to the factors contributing to the behavioral intention to use mobile learning, such as user profiles, educational content, and environmental factors [33]. In addition, the autonomy, competence, and relatedness dimensions of our proposed model can be linked with the personalization, authenticity, and collaboration features of the pedagogical framework developed by [10]. Under the lenses of motivation theories, the personalization feature has strong implications for autonomous learning. The authenticity feature also privileges context-aware ubiquitous learning. The collaboration feature highlights opportunities for online networking and data sharing.