Best practice: quizzes. And the winner is?

How can you make a lesson more interesting? How can you motivate students? By using quizzes. Ines Lopez tells how more students score better grades.

Mechanical Engineering best practice: the quiz as test tool
Professor Ines Lopez-Arteaga of the Department of Mechanical Engineering has come up with a way of really getting through to students during lectures, namely quizzes. Odd? Maybe. But it works. Ines gave a colloquium on the tried and tested quizzes on 19 March. 

SharePoint
Ines tried out all kinds of methods, including the renowned ‘hats off to you’ and voting boxes, but none of them lived up to her wishes and requirements. Until she came across a SharePoint application. Ines: “You can incorporate surveys, multiple choice or values. This was exactly what I was looking for.”

Listening intently
It works like this. During the lectures the lecturer asks a number of short questions, which the students can enter in SharePoint. Ines explains that the answers to these questions give her insight into the level of her students’ knowledge. Ines: “After the quiz I provide the group with immediate feedback on the answers. Where I note that students have difficulty with the content, I explain the answer once again. The advantage is that now they listen intently.

And the winner is
Those who score above 55% in all quizzes get half a point added to their exam grade. This is a direct reason for students to take part in the quizzes. Added motivation is provided by the prize that is awarded to the person with the highest score at the end of the series of lectures: the opportunity to drive a truck on the DAF test track.

Less repetition
Ines says that a quiz has terrific pay-offs. “Of course, a quiz takes time, about half an hour, but you avoid having to repeat a lot of stuff, which is what I was doing before I started working with quizzes. Various surveys have revealed that students find this repetition really bothersome. When I do repeat things now it is to explain those questions that have been poorly answered but in a much more targeted way than before.“

Higher success rate
Exams show that the use of quizzes means that frequent errors are no longer made. The success rate has improved substantially. Ines: “It’s great to hear that students say that even though they do not start studying any earlier or study any harder, their scores are nonetheless higher.” Finally, more students seem to be coming to the lectures and even more often to supervised self-study. Ines: “Who’s next?”  

The PowerPoint presentation used by Ines to illustrate her story about quizzes will be available on the Bachelor College intranet site soon.