Effect of quiz format on student performance and answer-changing behaviour on formative assessments

ABSTRACT

Formative assessments have been shown to improve student success; however, the format in which these assessments are implemented has not been well researched. In this study, individual Anatomy and Physiology lab sections were administered formative assessments composed of either a projected (i.e. ‘shared-display’) quiz presentation or a pen-and-paper quiz presentation. Students’ performance, as well as their answer-changing behaviours, were recorded to compare the effect of these two assessment formats. We found no significant difference in mean quiz grade between shared-display and pen-and-paper assessments, nor did answer-changing frequency differ by treatment. Student answer-changing success rate – a measure of how often a student changed an answer and their new response was correct – was found to have a weak but significant positive correlation with mean quiz grade. Our findings suggest that the assessment presentation format does not significantly affect student performance and that, given the population sampled, answer-changing tended to benefit students’ final quiz grade. Therefore, projecting images for use in formative assessments provides an alternative to traditional pen-and-paper administration with no apparent detriment or advantage to student success.

KEYWORDS:

• Answer-changing behaviour
• formative assessment
• free-response
• pedagogy using powerpoint
• shared-display assessment
• second-pass behaviour

Acknowledgments

The authors of this manuscript wish to thank the A&P lecture instructors and graduate teaching assistants who instructed the A&P labs during this research study. Additionally, the authors would like to extend gratitude to G. Fisher for her generous proofreading of this manuscript, and two anonymous reviewers. A portion of this research was presented by [blinded authors] in the Spring 2018 for a graduate student research symposium at the institution where this research was conducted. The authors of this work have no conflicts of interests to report.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary Material

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Additional information

Funding

No funding to disclose.