Frequent Quizzing More Effective Than Traditional Testing: Students Don't Like It, But It Works
ByOn testing in school, many seem to be either in favor or not, but a new study may have found a happy medium: frequent quizzing rather than two or three major exams.
The Internet has become an enemy to classroom education, allowing for students to complete classwork, read lessons and even attend class digitally. The new study also figures a way for educators to use the web to their advantage.
According to the New York Times, the study researchers conducted their experiment with 901 University of Texas students in a popular introductory psychology course. The students were instructed to bring their laptops to class and to take a quiz online.
The study, published in the journal PLoS One, suggests short and frequent tests encourage attendance, as well as enhance and measure learning. The researchers also found the method to work particularly well with students from low-income homes.
"This study is important because it introduces a new method to implement frequent quizzing with feedback in large classrooms, which can be difficult to do," said Jeffrey D. Karpicke, a professor of psychology at Purdue not involved in the study. "This is the first large study to show that classroom quizzing can help reduce achievement gaps."
Students of Psych 301 in the fall 2011 semester were instructed by their professors to bring laptops, if they had one, to the first day of classes. They all did and were given an online quiz of eight questions in every class afterward. Seven of the questions would be the same for everyone in the class and one would be tailored for each student, such as a question they had gotten wrong before.
Namita Pallod, 18, took the course and said what any professor would dream of hearing from their pupils.
"[The questions] weren't impossible, as long as you did the reading and paid attention in class, but there were definitely some 'thinkers,'" Pallod told NYT. "The harder part for me was always when old questions you had missed previously came back."
James W. Pennebaker and Samuel D. Gosling joint-teach Psych 301 at UT and also co-authored the study with another professor, Jason D. Ferrell. Pennebaker said the students hated the concept at first and gave the course low marks on the evaluations.
"For the first few weeks, every time their friends went out drinking, they couldn't go; they had yet another test the next day," Gosling offered as a reason for not liking the experimental class format.
The other side of the experiment was the students were not given a midterm or final exam and cumulative test scores determined those grades.
The students who took constant quizzes scored ten percent higher than a Psych 301 class that had a traditional midterm and final exam.
"Then they get here and, when they fail the first midterm, they think it's a fluke," Gosling said of traditional testing. "By the time they've failed the second one, it's too late. The hole's too deep. The quizzes make it impossible to maintain that state of denial."