Frequent announced pharmacology quizzes have no impact on academic performance: An exploratory study

Abstract

Context: The impact of frequent announced quizzes on the students' level of understanding and learning has had inconsistent results. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the possible benefits of frequent announced quizzes in pharmacology on the performance of a representative sample of Libyan pharmacy students. Subjects and Methods: Eleven pharmacy students were studied during the “pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics” course. The initial six sessions were delivered using the conventional lectures with interactive questions and answers. In the following six sessions, at the beginning of each session, students were informed that they will have a quiz at the end of each session. At the end of the semester, the corresponding total scores of quizzes in the two periods were compared. Results: The mean final scores of the pharmacokinetics lesson were not significantly different from that of the pharmacodynamics (75.8 ± 11.1 vs. 68.6 ± 17.5 on the scale of 100, respectively, P = 0.13). There was no significant difference in the mean score of the six quizzes compared with the mean final term score of pharmacokinetics. Conclusions: Frequent announced quizzes were not beneficial on enhancing the students' performance and learning.