diversity. As Assistant Professor, she is responsible for participating in teaching, scholarship and service for the department. Dr. Stiner-Jones received her Bachelor’s and PhD. degrees from Wright State University and her MBA from Capital University. After completing her PhD in Biomedical Sciences, she completed postdocs, in neuroimmunology and psychoneuroimmunology at Ohio State. Her work has been published in numerous scientific journals and presented both nationally and internationally. After completing her postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Stiner-Jones accepted a faculty position in Ohio State’s College of Dentistry and served as Director of Minority Student Recruitment and DENTPATH, a post baccalaureate program to
obtain help with course materialwhile other students were taking exams and quizzes. This paper compares the overallperformance of both sets of students in order to determine which assessment approach was moreeffective in helping the students learn the course material. This paper also addresses the questionof whether distributed assessment provided true “academic” benefits or whether it simply actedas a mechanism to encourage students to remain current with the course’s subject matter.IntroductionTeaching innovations such as the flipped classroom and the studio format are a result ofinstructors seeking methods to improve their ability to teach. The literature generally agrees onthe overall improvement in student achievement provided by these