Abstract:

The use of mock exams has been proved a successful path to increase student performance on the final test score1,2. Moreover, activities such as group discussion and teamwork are well-known activities to further increase learning development and reinforcement. Thus, combining these activities plus a “price”, consisting of a “lifeline” extra question in the final exam, is proposed as a tool to improve teamwork and learning.

The participants were first year students of the “Fashion Desing and Management” bachelor and the double bachelor of “Fashion Design and Management and Fine Arts ” of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the Rey Juan Carlos University during the academic year 2023-2024. This methodology has been implemented in the subject of “Fabrics and Materials” from both the morning and afternoon shifts simultaneously.

The activity consisted into dividing the students into groups of 3-8 people. Beforehand, students have to prepare a multiple-choice exam with 10 questions, ensuring that the questions covered the complete subject syllabus, and the difficulty was similar for each exam. Each of the groups gives their prepared exam to the other teams, thus each of the groups has the exam prepared by the rest of the groups (i.e for 8 groups, group 1 must solve exams 2-8). Each group is encouraged to discuss the solution of the exam between the different team members without the use of the class notes. This endorses discussion and debate and allow the students to learn from each other and therefore learning while having fun. Moreover, the preparation of the exam allows students to consult the subject syllabus and this allows them to learn without realising it.

After the activity is concluded, the team which achieves the maximum score is “awarded” with the “lifeline” question: an extra question on the final exam. While this seems as the final “goal” the reality is that thank to the preparation of the questions for the mock exam alongside the discussion, allows the students to reinforce concepts and prepare themselves for the final exam.

It has been found that the students show positive feedback to the activity, specially on the weeks prior to the final exam. We conclude that this activity endows the students with more self-confidence and preparation before the exam, as well as increases their creativity.

References:
[1] Mrozkova, I.; Kučerová, K.; Sikolova, M.; Dooley, J. MOCK EXAM AND FEEDBACK AS INSTRUMENTS TO ENHANCE EXAM SUCCESS. EDULEARN20 Proceedings 2020, 1, 8972–8981. https://doi.org/10.21125/EDULEARN.2020.0928.
[2] Abraham, N.; Telang, N. K. Implementation of Mock Exam Structure for an Introductory Engineering Course. 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings 2020. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34774.

Keywords:

Quizzes, Soft Skills, Student Motivation, Active Learning, Experiential Learning, Creativity Thinking.