*Large Introductory Microbiology Course (allied health)
*No prerequisites
*Diverse student population
Even among students who attend class regularly, a subset do not perform well on exams. Exams are composed equally of multiple choice and short essay questions.
Students lack metacognition skills and are not given enough opportunities in class to practice "write-to-learn" study techniques.
Studies have shown that
*enforced learning activities
*frequent testing (short answer quizzes)
improve student learning outcomes and retention
Question: Does more frequent assessment promote student learning outcomes?
*Does it increase the mean exam scores for the class as a whole?
*Does it decrease the number of failures (<D)?
*Does this intervention narrow the "gap" in performance between high-risk and low-risk students?
In the past I have given a pre-chapter quiz, which the students take individually and then as a group for each chapter before I cover it in class; each student's grade is the average of their individual and their group scores. These quizzes do not seem to affect their exam scores, even when quiz questions are on the exams. Nor are group quiz grades much higher when compared to individual quiz scores. It often appears that for several questions per quiz there is no knowledgeable person in the group, even though they knew they had to read the chapter in advance of taking the quiz.
I also use short-answer questions on exams, often with a graph or a figure which were used in lecture, but most students do very poorly on these questions. Next semester for each exam I will probably give them a set of potential short-answer questions in advance and then use up to five of them on the exam.
I am using more and more in-class assignments in which they analyze a research article with content that is relevant to that topic we are covering in the course (some articles are real case studies, some are discovery science, some are hypothesis-driven, some are epidemiological, etc.)
I would rate almost all of my students "high-risk" (low performing with poor preparation).
There seems to be little or no relationship between attendance and grade (most of these students attend regularly because they know they think they need an A or B to get into most health degree programs; they actually only need a C).
So I would definitely be interested in knowing what sorts of interventions and assessments you use and how they affect overall performance. edited 16:31, 17 Jul 2009
I have also had them do HW, bring it in and we start the class going overing the HW. They are graded on 2,1,0.
Could the TA help you grade?
To get at Jenny's question, you could ask a multiple choice question and have them justify the answer or say why the others are incorrect.
-The exams that you are repeating should also be primarily short answer if that's the kind of practice you're giving them. Make sure you describe (when putting this together) that the practice questions also have low level questions that are more like m.c. question on the exam.
-peer grading of the papers in that 2 minute time frame
Instead of you explaining the right answer, can you ask one of them to explain it? This would be after they have checked with their neighbors.
Can you go back to your old exams and only grab the essay question grade for your comparison?
Do you give a study guide? I do give my students learning objectives for each chapter that serves as a study guide. I use Bloom's taxonomy in this study guide.
Your study with the quizzes and group discussion is a modified version of think-pair-share.