Optimizing Student Use of Quiz Questions as a Learning Tool

Abstract

OBJECTIVEStudents often utilize practice questions to improve understanding and retention of session content and to prepare for exams. However, a major challenge is aligning questions with session learning objectives. The goal of this study is to change student behavior to use questions as a learning tool, create intuitive question searching at the correct level, and align commercial and professor‐written question banks.METHODA developmental model was created combining faculty‐generated questions with commercial question bank questions. Three surveys were sent out to assess perceptions of question bank utilization. The first two surveys were sent out simultaneously, one to faculty and one to students, to assess how practice questions were used for study purposes. Following the developmental model, a pilot study was created using two practice quizzes with faculty‐generated practice questions for a pharmacy anatomy course. After the completion of the pharmacy anatomy course, the third survey was sent out to pharmacy students to assess their perception of the utility of practice quizzes and to assess whether student utilization of quizzes had changed.RESULTSTwenty‐three percent of faculty responded to the survey, indicating that most faculty create their own questions, but do not direct students to use commercial question banks. Seventy‐two students (a 12.04% response rate) responded to the first survey, indicating that 53% of students use faculty provided questions while 40% use commercial question banks and 34% use both. Most students reported using question banks to study the week before a test, three days before, or the day before the test. The first survey indicates that roughly 15% and 5.6% of students quiz themselves the same week of the lecture and the day of the lecture, respectively. In comparison, the post‐survey after the pilot study with a 15% response rate demonstrates that students began studying earlier using quiz questions. The post‐survey indicates 28.6% and 7.1% of students in the pilot study test themselves the week of the lecture and the day of the lecture, respectively. The percentage of students who quizzed themselves a week before the test also jumped from 44.4% to 57.1%. Additionally, in the original survey, only 37.5% of students said that they always incorporate practice questions as part of their studying. In the follow up survey, this jumped to 50%.CONCLUSIONThe initial survey showed students inhibit their study strategies by not quizzing themselves early enough. However, the curated set of progressive questions helped students incorporate question banks into their studying. Additionally, they used the question banks to start studying more effectively by quizzing themselves earlier.Support or Funding InformationPhiladelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine GeorgiaThis abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.