GIFT:  Formative Lecture Quizzes to Help Students Improve Their Understanding

Kathleen A Harper; Kurt Rhoads

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Conference: FYEE 2025 Conference
Location: University of Maryland - College Park, Maryland
Publication Date: July 27, 2025
Start Date: July 27, 2025
End Date: July 29, 2025
Conference Session: GIFTS I
Tagged Topic: FYEE 2025
Page Count: 4
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--55253
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/55253
Download Count: 14

Paper Authors

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Kathleen A Harper Case Western Reserve University

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Kathleen A. Harper is the assistant director of the Roger E. Susi First-year Engineering Experience at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). She received her M. S. in physics and B. S. in electrical engineering and applied physics from CWRU and her Ph. D. in physics, specializing in physics education research, from The Ohio State University.

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Kurt Rhoads Case Western Reserve University

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Kurt Rhoads, Ph.D., P.E. is the faculty director of the Roger E. Susi First-Year Engineering Experience at Case Western Reserve University. He holds a B.S. from the University of Maryland, College Park and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University, all in environmental engineering. Dr. Rhoads is a registered professional engineer in the state of Ohio.

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Abstract

In the first-year engineering experience at [Institution], students have two laboratory meetings and one lecture each week. One of the primary emphases of the lecture is introducing new programming concepts in MATLAB. While students regularly use coding in the labs and have weekly MATLAB homework assignments, the majority of their formal MATLAB instruction happens in the lecture. To provide the students with feedback on how well they remember major concepts from the previous week, the instructional team introduced weekly formative lecture quizzes in the 2023-24 school year. These quizzes also serve as an opportunity to model and promote effective metacognitive study skills, such as self-testing and reflection.

The exercise is relatively easy to implement. Students pick up a quiz paper as they enter lecture. As class begins, they answer a few short questions based on the material from the previous week’s lecture. The quiz is discussed before delving into the new topic of the week, and students keep the paper to turn in at the end of class. Students receive full credit for an honest attempt at the quiz, and the formative quizzes contribute 2% to the final course grade.

On a spring 2024 course survey, students rated the exercise as helpful to their learning, but almost all of the other course elements on the survey were rated more highly. Further, inspection of student quizzes showed little evidence that they were being used as a formative learning experience. Students almost always had exactly the right answer on their quizzes, even when the questions targeted known persistent difficulties. Only a few students made erasures, cross-outs, corrections, or notes to themselves on the papers. It seemed that students were either reluctant to try to answer the question before seeing the right answer or that they were unwilling to turn in a paper that had anything incorrect on it. This was in spite of directions specifically stating that they were supposed to be learning from the experience, that they should make note of difficulties, and that they would get full credit for an honest attempt.

To encourage better use of the quizzes as a formative learning experience, the instructors modified the quiz format for the 2024-25 year. Questions now appear twice on the page, with one instance labeled as "before class" and the other as "during discussion." A study of a small but representative sample of student quiz papers shows much more evidence of students initially making mistakes, correcting errors, and writing notes to themselves about things to remember. Additionally, on the fall 2024 semester-end survey, students rated the formative quizzes more positively. A greater percentage of students found them to be effective learning tools, and they also ranked slightly higher in comparison to the other course elements than they had in the previous year. Similar data are being collected in the spring 2025 semester, which will be included in the full paper's analysis.

Citation
Format

Harper, K. A., & Rhoads, K. (2025, July), GIFT: Formative Lecture Quizzes to Help Students Improve Their Understanding Paper presented at FYEE 2025 Conference, University of Maryland - College Park, Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--55253

TY - CPAPER
AB - In the first-year engineering experience at [Institution], students have two laboratory meetings and one lecture each week. One of the primary emphases of the lecture is introducing new programming concepts in MATLAB. While students regularly use coding in the labs and have weekly MATLAB homework assignments, the majority of their formal MATLAB instruction happens in the lecture. To provide the students with feedback on how well they remember major concepts from the previous week, the instructional team introduced weekly formative lecture quizzes in the 2023-24 school year. These quizzes also serve as an opportunity to model and promote effective metacognitive study skills, such as self-testing and reflection.

The exercise is relatively easy to implement. Students pick up a quiz paper as they enter lecture. As class begins, they answer a few short questions based on the material from the previous week’s lecture. The quiz is discussed before delving into the new topic of the week, and students keep the paper to turn in at the end of class. Students receive full credit for an honest attempt at the quiz, and the formative quizzes contribute 2% to the final course grade.

On a spring 2024 course survey, students rated the exercise as helpful to their learning, but almost all of the other course elements on the survey were rated more highly. Further, inspection of student quizzes showed little evidence that they were being used as a formative learning experience. Students almost always had exactly the right answer on their quizzes, even when the questions targeted known persistent difficulties. Only a few students made erasures, cross-outs, corrections, or notes to themselves on the papers. It seemed that students were either reluctant to try to answer the question before seeing the right answer or that they were unwilling to turn in a paper that had anything incorrect on it. This was in spite of directions specifically stating that they were supposed to be learning from the experience, that they should make note of difficulties, and that they would get full credit for an honest attempt.

To encourage better use of the quizzes as a formative learning experience, the instructors modified the quiz format for the 2024-25 year. Questions now appear twice on the page, with one instance labeled as &quot;before class&quot; and the other as &quot;during discussion.&quot; A study of a small but representative sample of student quiz papers shows much more evidence of students initially making mistakes, correcting errors, and writing notes to themselves about things to remember. Additionally, on the fall 2024 semester-end survey, students rated the formative quizzes more positively. A greater percentage of students found them to be effective learning tools, and they also ranked slightly higher in comparison to the other course elements than they had in the previous year. Similar data are being collected in the spring 2025 semester, which will be included in the full paper&#39;s analysis.

AU - Kathleen A Harper
AU - Kurt Rhoads
CY - University of Maryland - College Park, Maryland
DA - 2025/07/27
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - GIFT: Formative Lecture Quizzes to Help Students Improve Their Understanding

UR - https://peer.asee.org/55253
DO - 10.18260/1-2--55253
ER -