Tracking Student Learning from Class to Exam using Isomorphic Questions

Abstract

Recent computer science education research using isomorphic questions in Peer Instruction (PI) classes demonstrates that students learn from talking to their peers and listening to the instructor's follow-up explanation. These results provide evidence of the effectiveness of the PI process but are limited to what happens in a single class session. The present work extends the use of isomorphic questions to investigate how in-class learning translates to success on the final exam. Despite considerable time between in-class questions and the final exam, we find that students who learn in class are shown to retain that learning and to perform better than students who did not learn in class. In addition, compared to students already understanding the material, those who learned the material in class are almost (87%) as likely to correctly answer isomorphic exam questions. Our results have implications for the value of difficult PI questions and the meaning of in-class response graphs.