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Work in Progress: Improving Students’ Achievement on Summative Exams in Large Undergraduate Engineering Classes: Taking Advantage of Online Formative Assessments

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Conference

2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Minneapolis, MN

Publication Date

August 23, 2022

Start Date

June 26, 2022

End Date

June 29, 2022

Conference Session

ERM: Let's Talk about Tests! (Tests Part 1)

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--40994

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/40994

Download Count

208

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Paper Authors

biography

Assad Iqbal Utah State University

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Assad Iqbal is a Graduate Teaching/Research Assistant and doctoral candidate in Engineering Education Department (EED) at the College of Engineering, Utah State University USA. He is a Computer Information System Engineer and a Master in Engineering Management with almost 14 years of teaching experience in undergraduate engineering and technology education. His current research interest is to explore the use and impact of formative assessments in online learning to promote self-regulated, self-directed life-long learning. He has expertise in the development and use of think-aloud protocols, and quantitative, qualitative and mixed-method research designs.

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biography

Oenardi Lawanto Utah State University

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Dr. Oenardi Lawanto is an associate professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Utah State University, USA. He received his B.S.E.E. from Iowa State University, his M.S.E.E. from the University of Dayton, and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Lawanto has a combination of expertise in engineering and education and has more than 30 and 14 years of experience teaching engineering and cognitive-related topics courses for his doctoral students, respectively. He also has extensive experience in working collaboratively with several universities in Asia, the World Bank Institute, and USAID to design and conduct workshops promoting active-learning and life-long learning that is sustainable and scalable. Dr. Lawanto’s research interests include cognition, learning, and instruction, and online learning.

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Abstract

The positive effects of testing in retention of studied information and potentiation of new learning coupled with the problem of anxiety associated with high stake testing make formative assessment (i.e., no stake, optional testing for the purpose of identifying and correcting misconceptions through feedback) as the most favorable intervention to help students’ learning. Since the enrollment heavy fundamental courses in undergraduate engineering present a challenge for the instructor to administer, evaluate and provide personalized feedback on frequent formative assessments. This research investigates the students’ participation in optional, online canvas administered formative assessments and its relationship with their learning achievement (exam scores) in an undergraduate Fundamentals of Electronics course. Sample includes of 820 students enrolled in the course over 7 semesters (spring 2018 – spring 2021). Data includes participation of students in 12 formative assessment quizzes with minimal automatic feedback, and their scores on three midterm and one final (summative) exams. Preliminary findings suggest that female students had higher formative assessment participation (FAP) compared to male students. The analysis also showed significant positive correlations between students’ FAP and their learning achievement. Both FAP as well as its relationship with students’ exam scores favored female students, however some of the relationships were not statistically significant which might be attributed to smaller group sizes of females. Future work includes an investigation into how task value beliefs drive students’ FAP and learning achievement. Furthermore, qualitative investigation into students’ reasons and motivations for differential FAP and its impact on their learning achievement will be carried out within a purposively selected sample of students. This study has implications for students’ self-regulated and self-directed life-long learning.

Iqbal, A., & Lawanto, O. (2022, August), Work in Progress: Improving Students’ Achievement on Summative Exams in Large Undergraduate Engineering Classes: Taking Advantage of Online Formative Assessments Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40994

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