Teacher feedback-based collaborative testing improves students’ knowledge gaps of parasitology

Abstract

Collaborative testing has been demonstrated to be able to improve students' performance, enhance students' learning, as well as knowledge retention in many different courses. However, this examination mode lacks the process of teacher feedback. Herein, a short teacher feedback was added immediately after the collaborative testing so as to improve the students' performance. The parasitology class of 121 undergraduates were randomized into two groups: Group A and Group B. A collaborative testing was carried out at the end of theoretical teaching. During the test, students would first answer questions as individuals for 20 minutes. Then, students from Group A answered the same questions in groups (5 students in each group) for 20 minutes, while the group-testing duration was only 15 minutes in Group B. Immediately after the group testing, teachers conducted a 5-minutes feedback about the morphology identification according to the answers analysis by Group B. Four weeks later, a final test was conducted in individual test. The total scores and score for each examination content were anlyzed. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the final exam scores between both groups (t=-1.278, p=0.204). However, the morphological and diagnostic test results of the final examination in Group B were significantly higher than those of the mid-term examination, while there was no significant change in Group A (t=4.333, p=0.051). The results confirmed that the teacher feedback after the collaborative testing can effectively make up for the students' knowledge gaps.