Mastery Quizzes as a Teaching Tool in the Mechanics Series

A bstract Ohio Northern University (ONU) is a 2800 student, United Methodist Church related, undergraduate institution. In the Fall quarter of the 1988‐89 academic year, the Engineering College began using mastery quizzes in the “Mechanics Series” courses of Statics, Dynamics, and Mechanics of Materials 1. These three courses are typically taken during the sophomore year. Mastery quizzes are used as a reinforcing tool. Three or four areas in each of these mechanics courses were identified as critical to the success of a student in future courses. A set of mastery quizzes has been made for each of these critical areas. A student must complete one of the quizzes in each set with a perfect score to pass the course. The first quiz in each critical area is taken in class for a score, and if not completed perfectly, must be retaken outside class on a pass‐fail basis. This analysis looked at the percent answered correctly by Ohio Northern students in the specific areas of statics, dynamics, and mechanics of materials on the Fundamentals Exam (F.E.) to determine whether the use of mastery quizzes improved scores in these three areas. Statistical analysis (Analysis of Variance‐ANOVA) was performed on the two sets of data. The three years from 1988‐90 were used to represent the F.E. pass rates without the use of mastery quizzes and 1991‐93 were used to represent the scores with the use of mastery quizzes. Mixed results were obtained from this analysis. It indicated that mastery quizzes improved the scores in the dynamics and mechanics areas, which seem to be the most difficult courses of the three for ONU students. There seems to be no improvement in the statics area. It is felt that the reinforcing of concepts and problem solving by the repetitive taking of mastery quizzes is a help in the more difficult courses such as Dynamics and Mechanics of Materials.