Abstract:

The increased use of online quizzes as a mode of instruction was stimulated by the recent pedagogical adaptations necessitated by the COVID pandemic, where students were not physically present in the classroom and there were reduced opportunities for teacher-student interactions. These quizzes were retained and updated upon return of students to the physical classroom setting and have shown to be an additional and significant factor in improving student learning over and above that seen in previous versions of the class that did not have these quizzes.

Normal in-class teacher-student interactions involve many impromptu questions and answers regarding material that is being presented at that moment. From these interactions, a teacher can determine students’ levels of understanding of the topic and can vary their presentation accordingly.

Online teaching during the pandemic reduced much of this personal interaction, and in many cases, it was difficult to correctly judge the level of understanding by students at the time of instruction. In order to partially address this lack of feedback, a series of non-graded incremental questions were created that paralleled the information presented during class and were designed to maintain engagement of students and to guide them through the learning process.

The original intent was for these quiz questions to be answered during class time, however, after the return to in-person classroom teaching, it quickly became apparent that students preferred to take these quizzes after having experienced the traditional teaching and learning class period. This had the effect of doubling the exposure of class material to students and, due to the nature of the questions, providing positive reinforcement for their successful completion of each question.

As these quizzes were made available using a Learning Management System (LMS), it was possible to track individual student attempts to each question and to correlate those results with later exam assessments. It was also possible to determine which students were having difficulty with particular sub-topics and to address these issues directly.

Initial data analysis indicates that exam performance by students who completed 75% or more of the quizzes showed a five-percentage point increase in their final course grade compared to their peers who completed fewer quizzes. Further data analysis will address the question of whether completing quizzes creates higher performing students, or whether higher performing students complete more quizzes.

Keywords:

Quizzes, questions, online, LMS.