Assessing students' use of optional online lecture reviews

Abstract

Summary Online practice quizzes can be used to supplement instruction in the classroom. Such quizzes can engage retrieval practice, thereby improving learning and retention. However, despite their potential benefits, recent work suggests that students typically underutilize online practice quizzes. This article reports an observational classroom study, in which students were provided optional online reviews throughout the semester. The reviews could be accessed in test format, in which students were given multiple‐choice questions and provided correct answer feedback, or in read format in which students were given the same questions and were shown the correct answers. Students who used the test format performed better on exams than students who used the read format or did not use the reviews. Nevertheless, the massive majority of the online reviews (approximately 88%) were not completed, highlighting the tendency for students to underutilize optional online reviews.

Do Individual Differences in Cognition and Personality Predict Retrieval Practice Activities on MOOCs?

“…Within the context of students using MOOC's platforms where the student has a greater autonomous responsibility for his/her studies, personality factors are potentially even more critical. Hence, the use of these platforms are often (as in the present study) not mandatory for the students, and as shown by Corral et al (2020), the majority of students do not complete their online quizzing. Potentially, the likelihood of using retrieval practice in MOOC's platforms is associated with personality characteristics.…”

“…Ideally, an inclusion of the low-RP group would both have increased the statistical power of the within-group analysis, and mimicked the between-group analysis to a greater extent, but as the participants in the low-RP group had barely engaged in retrieval practice activities on the MOOC platform, it prohibited us to include them in the analysis. Second, quizzing typically remains highly unutilized on MOOCs when the items remain only optionally available ( Corral et al, 2020 ). Thus, it is also possible that quiz volume effects are difficult to observe when students merely use retrieval practice on MOOCs even if they have the possibility to do so.…”

“…Such quizzing features are often optionally implemented, that is, students can complete quizzes as an additional support for their learning. However, several studies indicate that quizzes remain highly unutilized when they are optional in online course (Olson and McDonald, 2004;Kibble, 2007;Carpenter et al, 2017;Corral et al, 2020). Corral et al (2020), for instance, showed that nearly 45% of students did not complete a single quiz during an online course covering introductory psychology and that 88% of these quizzes were not completed.…”

“…However, several studies indicate that quizzes remain highly unutilized when they are optional in online course (Olson and McDonald, 2004;Kibble, 2007;Carpenter et al, 2017;Corral et al, 2020). Corral et al (2020), for instance, showed that nearly 45% of students did not complete a single quiz during an online course covering introductory psychology and that 88% of these quizzes were not completed. Furthermore, Carpenter et al (2017) examined the quizzing frequency among the students that took an online biology course, showing that about 50% of the students completed the practice quizzes that were made available.…”

Retrieval practice and retention of course content in a middle school science classroom

“…For instance, in a survey of undergraduates, rereading was the most reported and preferred method of study (Karpicke, Butler, & Roediger, 2009). In a more recent survey about study strategies (Corral, Carpenter, Perkins, & Gentile, 2020), 34.5% of the undergraduates reported that they regularly reread textbook chapters and 35% indicated that the regularly copy or rewrite their notes.…”