Just-in-Time Daily Quizzes as Learning Tool for Self Assessment and Content Mastery

In order to facilitate student learning, daily quizzes with a novel grading scheme have been developed to aid students in doing self-assessment on their learning progress and comprehension. The quizzes and the related grading structure and usage were constructed to provide quick and specific feedback on comprehension and mastery of technical material under the supposition that students will be better able to learn if they are provided with quick and specific feedback of what they do and do not know after they have immediately struggled to solve problems. The unusual grading approach has been adapted in order to increase the likelihood of the intrinsic benefits to the student of the self assessment tool rather than focusing on the graded aspect of the quizzes. These quizzes have been used in a number of technical courses over years of teaching. Although students have been skeptical at first due to the relatively large number of quizzes, there has been overwhelming support for the methods by the end of each course implementation. At the conclusion of each lecture a short quiz for the next class periods lecture is constructed by the instructor such that it emphasizes key points from the concluded lecture, provides example problems, and in some casesmay introduce material for the next lecture. Students are given these quizzes at the beginning the next class period, and work on them for the first few minutes of class. The quizzes are then graded as a class as the instructor asks students how they approached each problem and provides solution if none of the students were able to answer them correctly. The innovation is in the fact that each quiz is prepared just-in-time based on the current level of coverage of the course topic, and the fact that the grading scheme is unique and intended to provide the students with specific and detailed feedback on their performance to aid in the learning process without creating anxiety about the grade. This helps the students to view the quizzes as aids in the learning process, and transforms the quiz from an end in itself into a tool to facilitate learning and engage students in taking greater responsibility for their own learning. Student and faculty feedback has judged the quizzes to provide a valuable contribution in the learning process.