Case Study: Weekly Micro Quizzes

Abstract

Assessments are broken down within the animal behaviour course, so that 10% of marks are allocated to online weekly graded quizzes. This allows Will to monitor engagement and the level of learning throughout the delivery and helps him pinpoint particular students who are struggling or not engaging. It also allows students opportunities to apply and test their knowledge using quizzes to build further confidence in applying statistics.

Each quiz consists of three questions which are randomly drawn from a pool of questions. There are nine weekly quizzes in total which means each quiz is worth one point 1% of the final grade.

Students evaluate the module very positively and this has grown over the years. You can see in the graph above students have grown in their level of confidence over a three year comparison.

In addition to this Will is also using an online spreadsheet tool and survey system to encourage students to gather and input data about themselves anonymously. This data is then used by the whole group within statistical analysis tasks. The aim of this being to provide students with data and analysis questions which are relevant to them and their fellow students. Some of the data analysis can be carried out on the students’ mobile phones and analysed in class.