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Assessing the Impact of Weekly In-class Pop Quizzes on Student Performance in a Fundamental ECE Course

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Effective Teaching and Learning, and Post-Pandemic Classrooms

Tagged Division

Electrical and Computer Engineering Division (ECE)

Page Count

17

DOI

10.18260/1-2--42314

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/42314

Download Count

226

Paper Authors

biography

Olga Mironenko University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-1239-185X

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Dr. Olga Mironenko is a Teaching Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She received a specialist degree in Physics from Omsk F.M. Dostoevsky State University, Russia in 2009, and she received a Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Delaware in 2020. Her current interests include improvement of introductory analog signal processing and power systems courses, training for graduate teaching assistants, and mentoring of under-represented students in ECE.

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biography

Juan Alvarez University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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Juan Alvarez joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Illinois faculty in Spring 2011 and is currently a Teaching Assistant Professor. Prior to that, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at York University, Canada, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Chemical Physics Theory Group at the University of Toronto, Canada, and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Saskatchewan. He obtained his Ph.D. and M.S. from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois in 2004 and 2002, respectively. He teaches courses in communications, signal processing and probability.

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Abstract

This work evaluates the effect of weekly in-class pop quizzes on the learning outcomes of ECE sophomore-level undergraduate students in a signals & systems course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The quizzes pursued two goals: to increase class attendance and to motivate students to keep up with the material in a timely manner. While the quizzes may help achieve both goals, in-class pop quizzes may also result in the elevation of students’ stress as well as they may negatively impact the students’ attitude toward the instructor.

We analyze the overall impact of the quizzes on the students’ final grades from multiple perspectives. In addition, we examine the students’ opinion about the quizzes and the instructor. Finally, we evaluate if the quizzes encouraged students to attend lectures and stay on top of the material.

Our findings show that final grades are marginally negatively affected by the quizzes. However, the main reason for that is not the quizzes themselves but the large number of students (∼27%) who missed multiple quizzes. In fact, the quizzes resulted in improving the final grades for those students who attended most of them.

In addition, our results indicate that the students agree that quizzes helped them from multiple perspectives: encouraging attendance, promoting frequent review of course material, and preparing them for exams. Despite that, attendance decreased significantly toward the end of the semester.

Our findings also demonstrate that students experienced a high level of stress due to quizzes. However, no evidence was found that the quizzes had a significant negative effect on the students’ attitude toward the instructors

Mironenko, O., & Alvarez, J. (2023, June), Assessing the Impact of Weekly In-class Pop Quizzes on Student Performance in a Fundamental ECE Course Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42314

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