Using weekly knowledge check quizzes for progression

Prof Jimmy Winfield
"Financial Reporting 1 is a large first-year Accounting course. The Amathuba course site reflects the structured format of the course and is organised into weeks, with each week containing between five and seven ‘Lessons’. Each lesson includes required activities and recommended activities. The required activities typically include a video lecture, and a knowledge check quiz, and sometimes also a practice exercise. The recommended activities variously include textbook references, supplementary readings, real-world examples, and additional exercises. To progress to the next Lesson, a student must first successfully complete the current lesson’s knowledge check quiz."

ABOUT THE COURSE

  • First-year Accounting course in the Commerce faculty;
  • Class size: Approximately 700 students and about 20 tutors;
  • Teaching and Learning model: Blended;
  • Online activities: Weekly modules comprising 5-7 lessons containing pre-recorded video lectures, knowledge check formative quizzes covering core concepts, other recommended activities, and a marked quiz;
  • In-person activities: a weekly in-person tutorial and a weekly in-person lecture for working through problems.

ENABLE APPLIED

Jimmy has set up flexible assessment and feedback through regular quizzes to keep students on track.
The knowledge check quizzes have several functions in Jimmy’s teaching strategies:

  • Incentivise students to engage with the course content, because completion of each quiz is required to access the next Lesson's material. Also, students know that their completion rates are recorded and measured (the convenor is transparent about this in his course communication; and uses quiz completion statistics, as well as other student assessment and activity data to determine if students qualify for the weekly progress badges);
  • Provide students opportunities to test their knowledge as a purely formative activity which provides immediate feedback (Formative assessment and feedback), and can be repeated as many times as needed to reach the required pass mark to progress (Ipsative assessment);
  • Provide indications of progress for both students and the lecturer (who uses quiz completion statistics as a way to monitor engagement).

HOW

The knowledge checks consist of short five- or ten-mark quizzes on Amathuba, each with feedback for both correct and incorrect responses. Students can make as many attempts as needed until they attain the 80% required to continue. The function of the quizzes is formative and do not count towards the final course mark. The quizzes are released in a weekly block (i.e. all the quizzes are available at the start of each week), allowing students to work a few days in advance if that suits their schedule or learning process better. Each knowledge check requires that the preceding lesson’s knowledge check is completed with a mark of at least 80%. This can be set up easily using Amathuba’s “release conditions” feature.

LINKS