Enhancing student learning through on-line quizzes

  • Authors:

  • Denise Woit;Dave Mason

  • Affiliations:

  • Ryerson Polytechnic University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Canada, M5B 3K3;Ryerson Polytechnic University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Canada, M5B 3K3

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the thirty-first SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

We have experimented with the use of weekly on-line quizzes to enhance student learning in our first-year computer science courses. In our experiments we compared the effectiveness of using quizzes to the alternative of using weekly marked laboratory assignments. The results of our experiments show that student learning and retention increase with on-line quizzes. Weekly quizzes would be impossible if they were administered and marked in the traditional fashion; thus, we developed and used a secure, online environment for administering, writing, and marking the quizzes, with most of the marking performed automatically via simple marking programs. In this paper we describe our experiment, present our observations about student learning, outline student opinion, relate problems we encountered and our solutions, and provide technical details of our closed-quiz and marking environment.