Abstract:

United Arab Emirates (UAE) college students are mostly ESL (English as second language) speakers with often insufficient level of preparedness for the rigours of college training. With the goal of introducing, we implemented game-type quizzes weekly to create another opportunity for preparatory students’ chemistry learning. Students in preparatory program spend at least one semester between high school and the first-year credit courses at the college level. Quiz-games were prepared in two ways: paper-based quiz (PQ) and computer-based quiz (CQ), and students had a chance to try both during the semester. Student’s attitude questionnaire (consists of questions examining student’s enjoyment and motivation in learning chemistry) as a research instrument was applied to find out the impact of quizzes to student’s attitude via pre-post methodology. Likert 5-point scale was used to quantify students’ responses. Our findings indicate that both types of quizzes help in students’ performance. About 78% of students either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with the use of CQ and about 92% of students “agreed” and “strongly agreed” with PQ. There is also indirect evidence that students’ problem-solving skills improved in part thanks to the use of quiz games. We found that regular weekly quiz-games motivate students to study/learn regularly, even when no substantial grade points stem from playing the games. Quiz-games are designed so to assist instructors in understanding their students’ main conceptual issues and allows them to modify the course delivery methods during the semester, and in future implementation of the course.

Keywords:

Quiz, quiz-games, chemistry learning, student's attitude.