Online Quizzing and Incremental Feedback for Distance and Local Students

At the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, we have been offering our electrical engineering (EE) program to place-bound students throughout the state for nine years. These streaming-video offerings occur in concurrence with our local course offerings. The distance portion of our program continues to grow, with distance students now comprising about 25% of the students enrolled in a given course. This expansion of distance students combined with diminishing state resources has led to some unique instructional challenges. Several years ago we implemented a series of pilot studies to investigate the effectiveness of auxiliary techniques that supplement the instruction for both the local and distance students who are enrolled in these classes. Based on the results from these pilot studies, a multi-year study was implemented to investigate the use of online quizzing and incremental feedback to promote student self-directed learning and improve student confidence. This approach is not a replacement for, but instead a supplement to traditional assignments and projects. This paper describes the results of that multi-year study implemented in different types of electrical engineering courses. The purpose of the project and student outcomes are summarized. The implementation differences and limitations for the different types of electrical engineering courses (theoretical, mathematical, laboratory) are discussed. The results of student survey data clearly show that students like online quizzing with feedback as implemented in this study. Finally, the implications of faculty workload, both in the short and long term, are discussed.